Sonic Origins
by Ri2
Summary: How did Sonic get his super speed? What made Amy fall in love with him? How did the Chaotix become detectives? Why is Rouge both a secret agent and a gem thief? How did Cream and Big meet their pets? Silver the Hedgehog needs to know the answers to these questions, and far more, for the future might depend on it...
1. Prologue: an Emissary from the FYOO-CHUR

The following is an idea that's been percolating in my head for a couple of years now, and I figured that I might as well finally put pen to paper and get it out. I hope you enjoy. And don't get freaked out if things get a little weird, longtime readers of mine should know by now that's to be expected.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.

…

The sun was shining brightly on a world that had once again rescued from total annihilation. The super-quick blue hedgehog aptly named Sonic and his friends had, yet again, thwarted the plans of the evil Dr. Eggman to use an army of giant robots and/or an ancient sealed horror of ultimate evil to conquer and/or destroy the world, rescuing Eggman when his legendary evil of the week had predictably turned on him. (Seriously, does he lack pattern recognition or something? How many times does this have to happen before he realizes it never works? Then again, the same question could be asked of why he keeps trying to take over the world again and again and again even though it NEVER happens…) To celebrate their hard-fought but inevitable victory, the anthropomorphic animals had decided to have an outdoor barbecue to celebrate at a picnic site. Let's check in on them, shall we?

"So, I'd say that was another successful team-up, wouldn't you?" Sonic asked his interdimensional paramour, Blaze the Cat, as they leaned against a picnic table, a cup of punch in one hand and his signature favorite food, a chili dog, in the other. "And hopefully we'll have some even more successful 'team-ups' in the very near future, eh?" He asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

Blaze chuckled. "Beloved, if you were any other person, I would've had you executed for talking to me in such a fashion."

Sonic grinned wryly. "Then it's a good thing I'm NOT any other person, now is it?" He commented, taking a bite of out of his chili dog.

"Indeed," Blaze said, daintily taking a bite out of her own chili dog. She smiled. "I must say, I really have taken quite a liking to these. For a peasant dish, they aren't half bad."

"I'll tell Tails you felt that way. Though I'll probably leave out the 'peasant dish' thing," Sonic said.

Blaze nodded in agreement. "Yes, that would be more tactful."

"So, how are things going back in your world?" Sonic asked, changing the subject. "Eggman Nega up to anything lately?"

"No, he's been laying rather low as of late ever since you shot him half a dozen times for interrupting your vacation," Blaze said. "I'm sure he'll start something again soon, though. I've heard rumors that he's trying to awaken an ancient evil or find some legendary artifact, though that's hardly anything new."

Sonic wrinkled his nose in disgust. "What, again? What is it with the ancients sealing so many ancient world-destroying legendary evils or weapons away and not bothering to, you know, destroy them?"

"Most of them lacked the capability to do any more than seal them away back then," Blaze said. "And I don't see why you're complaining, beloved. If they weren't so many of those around, life would be a lot more boring."

Sonic chuckled. "You got me there. We're both of us adrenaline junkies through and through, aren't we? Guess that's another reason we fit so well together."

"One of many," Blaze agreed, leaning in to give the blue speedster a kiss…

"HEY, SONIC!" The very pink and very loud Amy Rose shouted, causing the two lovers to jump apart in surprise. "I thought you looked thirsty, so I brought you some punch!"

"Uh, thanks, Amy," Sonic said warily. "But I've already got some punch," he said, raising his cup.

Amy knocked the cup out of Sonic's hand, spilling its contents across the grass. "Whoops!" She giggled. "My bad! I'm so clumsy."

"So I have noticed," Blaze growled, narrowing her eyes at the obnoxious pink interloper as Sonic looked forlornly at the contents of his drink soaking into the ground.

"So here! You can have this!" Amy said, shoving the cup she was holding into Sonic's face so vigorously it nearly splashed him.

Sonic recoiled. "Uh, thanks but no…wait a minute, is that love potion?!"

Amy's eyes darted about. She laughed nervously. "Love potion? What are you talking about, Sonic? This isn't love potion! Why, whatever gave you that idea?"

"The fact that it's pink, bubbling, and little puffs of heart-shaped steam pop out now and then?" Sonic asked sardonically, leaning as far away from the cup as he could.

Amy laughed some more, her voice rather shrill. "Don't be ridiculous! It's not love potion! Now _drink up_."

She tried to splash the contents of the cup in Sonic's mouth, but Blaze's claw shot out and grabbed Amy's wrist, holding it in an unbreakable iron grip. "That is, in fact, love potion," Blaze said coldly, a look of pure fury in her eyes. "I've seen it many times before. Enough times to recognize when someone attempts to use it on myself or on someone close to me."

Amy gasped in pain as Blaze started to tighten her grip. She thought she could hear bones starting to crack. "Y-you're hurting me!" She exclaimed in terror.

"Good," Blaze hissed, eyes flaring. "You tried to use a mind-altering substance on my beloved. You tried to bend his mind, his _heart_ , to your will. You tried to _take him from me_. This is unforgivable. Were we on my world, I would be well within my rights to _kill you where you stand_."

"Then it's a good thing we AREN'T on your world, isn't it?!" Amy hissed, teeth clenched in pain. "We aren't in a tyrannical dictatorship ruled by a vain and greedy despot, but in a democracy where everyone is free to do as they please!"

Blaze raised an eyebrow. "Beloved, tell me: are date rape drugs legal in this country?"

"Nope," Sonic said, having trouble resisting a grin when Amy's face paled and her eyes widened in horror.

"B-but a love potion isn't a date rape drug!" Amy protested desperately.

"It's a mind-altering substance that makes the recipient more susceptible to the advances of whoever gives it to them. Sounds like a date rape drug to me," Blaze said calmly. "I wonder what sort of penalty attempting to use such a substance is in this world bears?" She grinned savagely. "Why don't we _find out_?"

"S-Sonic, do something!" Amy pleaded, terrified.

Sonic glared at Amy coldly for a moment before sighing and shaking his head. "Blaze, let her go."

Blaze looked at Sonic in surprise. "Beloved?"

"Sonic! You really DO care!" Amy cried in relief.

"No, I just don't want whatever they'd do to you in prison on my conscience," Sonic said wearily.

Blaze nodded in agreement. "Yes, a girl like her? Without her hammer to defend herself? They'd use her like currency, or worse." Amy gulped nervously and started sweating. Blaze glared at the pink hedgehog for a moment longer, then sighed and let go of her wrist. " _I_ would certainly have no trouble bearing whatever fate would befall you in this land's prisons on my conscience, but… My dear one is far more sensitive than I, so to spare him any pain, I shall heed his wishes and release you. This one time."

"Gee, thanks," Sonic snarked, amused that Blaze apparently considered him 'sensitive.'

Amy backed away cautiously, glaring at Blaze as she rubbed her sore wirst. "I don't know what sort of spell you put over my Sonic, but I'll never stop fighting for his heart! I _will_ win him back, and save him from you, no matter what it takes!"

"Child, I'm not the one who tried to brainwash him using a love potion. If anyone here is trying to use a spell, it's yourself," Blaze said, not looking the least bit threatened. Amy snarled and stomped away, throwing the cup of love potion on the grass as she left. Blaze pointed at it, and a fireball shot from her fingertip and struck the cup and its contents, causing it to explode, destroying the dangerous substance. "You are far too sentimental, beloved," Blaze chided sonic. "You should have let me turn her in so that she might suffer the consequences of her poorly conceived actions. Now she will try again, and again, each attempt more grandiose and foolish than the last, until either she succeeds or something terrible befalls her or you both."

Sonic sighed. "Yeah, you're probably right…but even though I'm not exactly fond of Amy, on some level I guess I still sort of consider her a friend, and I don't really want anything bad to happen to her."

Blaze sighed and shook her head. "Beloved, while I respect your capacity for mercy and forgiveness, there are times I worry you take it too far. I understand the value of turning the other cheek more than you might expect, but…There are limits to how far one should be willing to let something go. Your nemesis Eggman, for example, has harmed thousands if not millions of people over the years, and yet you refuse to end him once and for all. You do this, even knowing that by letting him live, he will only cause more suffering to more people, for he will never change his ways and just keep trying to conquer the world over and over again."

"You haven't exactly gotten around to ending YOUR Eggman," Sonic said defensively.

"Not for lack of trying. That one is more slippery than an eel," Blaze growled. "But rest assured, when the opportunity arises…I will not hesitate. Not even for a second. The safety of my subjects, of my realm, is tantamount, Sonic. If I were to simply allow every villain or monster who tries to destroy what I care for to walk away, what sort of message would that send? To my enemies and to my own people? That I value the lives of those I fight more than those whom I am sworn to protect?"

Sonic looked away. "… I can't say the thought hasn't occurred to me once or twice," Sonic admitted. "But I… I just… Even after everything he's done, I just… Don't think I could do it."

"You have vanquished many other fiends. Why can you not bring yourself to do the same for Dr. Eggman?" Blaze asked.

"Because most of those guys… Just about all them, really… Were robots or monsters or something else. They weren't, you know… People," Sonic said. "I mean, I don't want to turn out like Shadow and go around just killing everyone I don't like. I like the guy fine, but…"

"I suppose I can understand such a line of thought," Blaze said grudgingly. "But despite your best efforts… A time may come when you are going to have to cross that line, beloved. When you will have to do something you never thought yourself capable of to protect those you cherish. Are you afraid of what might happen if it does?"

"A little, yeah," Sonic admitted.

Blaze put a paw upon his shoulder. "Don't be. No matter what you do, no matter what you become… Know that I will love you no matter what. After all, you are able to love me in spite of my being a vain and greedy despot who rules a tyrannical dictatorship. It's only fair I return the favor."

Sonic smiled. "Thanks, Blaze. And… you don't really believe that about yourself, do you? Amy has no idea what she's talking about."

"This is true," Blaze agreed. "But make no mistake, beloved. I may be almost universally adored by my people, and I rule with a firm but fair hand… But I am indeed a tyrant, and have accepted this long ago. Just as I have accepted that I am FAR better than the alternative."

Sonic smirked. "Maybe I should give the tyrant thing a try once or twice. As I've said before, I don't mind playing the bad guy now and then." His eyes lit up. "Oh, speaking of which, did I ever tell you about the time where I somehow became King Arthur? There was a talking sword involved, and a magic storybook. It was kinda weird, really…"

"I've encountered talking swords and magic storybooks before," Blaze said.

"Yeah?" Sonic asked.

Blaze nodded. "They tried to kill me."

"…No offense, Blaze, but your world's kinda messed up," Sonic said.

"Which is why I strive to rule it, so that that sort of thing won't happen anymore," Blaze said. Sonic nodded, seeing her reasoning.

Meanwhile, Sonic's sidekick Tails the Fox was using a somewhat reluctant killer robot E-123 Omega as an impromptu grill for the barbecue, while an impressed Cream the Rabbit and her pet/best friend, Cheese the Chao, looked on. "THIS-IS-SO-DEMEANING," Omega groused as Tails flipped the patties on the grill extending from his chest cavity. "I-AM-A-WEAPON-OF-MASS-DESTRUCTION,-NOT-A-PURVEYOR-OF-COOKED-FOOD!"

"Look at it this way, Omega," Tails said as he flipped some more patties. "Your flamethrowers are probably killing all sorts of bacteria on the surface of the meat you're grilling."

"HOW-MUCH-BACTERIA?" Omega asked, intrigued.

"Billions upon billions, if not more," Tails said.

"I-DO-NOT-BELIEVE-I-HAVE-EVER-KILLED-SO-MANY-BEFORE," Omega said thoughtfully.

"And if you really want to, you could even imagine the meat you're cooking as helpless victims you're burning to death with your horrendous weapons of war," Tails said cheerfully.

"I-RATHER-LIKE-THAT-IDEA!" Omega said, perking up at this.

"Yeah, I thought you would," Tails said.

"AHAHAHAHA! BURN! BURN,-YOU-HELPLESS-SLABS-OF-MEAT! YOUR-ANGUISHED-SCREAMS-OF-AGONY-HELP-ME-SLEEP-SOUNDLY-IN-STASIS!" Omega roared, turning up the heat and causing Tails to recoil.

"Gah! Not so hot, Omega! You'll burn it to the point where nobody will be able to eat it!" Tails protested.

"WHY-SHOULD-I-CARE? _I-_ CERTAINLY-CANNOT-EAT-IT," Omega pointed out.

"Yes, but then neither can the rest of us," Cream pouted, lip trembling and eyes quivering. "So could you please turn down the heat just a little bit, Mr. Omega? Please?"

"…GRAAAH! OH,-FINE," Omega grumbled, turning down the heat a few notches.

"Whew! Thanks, Cream," Tails said in relief as he resumed his flipping. "And here I thought _I_ was the best at talking to machines!"

"Well, after spending so much time with Gemerl, Mr. Omega isn't so hard to deal with," Cream said.

"HEY! I'M-WAY-BETTER-THAN-THAT-OBSOLETE-TINCAN!" Omega protested.

"Gemerl almost destroyed the world two, maybe three times," Tails said, arching an eyebrow. "How many times have _you_ almost destroyed the world, Omega?"

"…GIVE-IT-TIME," Omega grumbled. "WHY-IS-THAT-MORBIDLY-OBESE-CAT-FISHING-IN-THE-PUNCHBOWL?"

Tails and Cream turned to glance at the humongous-and yes, morbidly obese-purple Big the Cat, who was indeed fishing in the punch bowl, an intent look on his dopey face. "That's… A really good question," Tails admitted.

"Mr. Big, why are you fishing in the punch bowl?" Cream asked politely.

"To catch a fish," Big said, as if it were obvious.

"Ask a stupid question…" Tails muttered.

"But Mr. Big, that's not a pond, that's a punch bowl," Cream said. "There aren't any fish in–"

"Got one," Big said as he yanked on his pole and pulled a freaking SWORDFISH out of the bowl.

Tails, Cream, and Omega stared in disbelief as Big put the flopping swordfish over his knee, hit it over the head until it stopped moving, and then started to bite into it, not caring that it was raw. "Well… That's… That's new…" Tails said after a moment.

"DOES-NOT-COMPUTE. DOES-NOT-COMPUTE," Omega beeped.

Cream stared at the cup of punch she was currently holding, and then slowly and carefully poured its contents onto the grass. "Tails, I don't think any of us should be drinking the punch anymore."

"That is probably a very good idea," Tails said, too dazed to notice that the patties were starting to burn.

"Ribbit," ribbited Big's pet frog Froggy, who was swimming in the punch bowl.

"I guess that's a wrap, fellas!" Vector the Crocodile, leader of the Chaotix Detective Agency, proclaimed as he slapped his two cohorts heartily on the back. "Another case closed!"

"Yes, except that we didn't get paid. Again," Espio the Chameleon deadpanned.

Vector froze. "Aw crap, I completely forgot about that."

"Vector, if we don't get the money to pay back Jaws the Loan Shark soon, he's going to EAT Charmy," Espio reminded his leader.

"I don't want to get eaten!" Charmy the Bee, the third and youngest member of the agency, wailed. "It's bad enough when Vector sticks me in his mouth to spit me at bad guys! I don't want to get DIGESTED!"

"Don't worry, guys, we'll think of something," Vector said nervously, not looking like he fully believed it. "And if all else fails… Maybe we can find enough evidence to get Jaws arrested for something. If he's in jail, then there's no way he can collect on our debt or eat Charmy!"

"Except there's nothing to stop him from hiring goons to come after us to make us pay for putting him away," Espio said.

Vector froze. "Ah. Yes. There is that," he said nervously.

"I'm pretty sure Fang the Sniper would be more than happy to take us out if Jaws paid him enough, given what we did to him the last time," Espio added.

"Thank you for reminding me," Vector said flatly. "Now I'm gonna have nightmares for a week."

"So will I!" Charmy whined. "We GOTTA find a way to pay him back, guys! If I get eaten, then we'll NEVER be able to find my parents so I can finally be reunited with my family!"

Vector and Espio suddenly looked very nervous. "Oh! Right! Your… Parents… Can't forget about them," Vector said, laughing anxiously.

"How's the investigation going, anyway?" Charmy asked.

"Great! Fantastic!" Vector said with a toothy grin. (And considering he was a crocodile, that was a LOT of teeth.) "Tell him, Espio!"

Espio blinked. "Huh? Oh. Yes. The investigation. We're closing in on them. It'll be any day now, I'm sure of it."

"Great!" Charmy said cheerfully, completely missing the anxious and uneasy glances his older friends were shooting each other. "It'll be so great to see them again! They probably miss me like crazy, after all these years I've been gone!"

"Yeah…" Vector gulped.

"Like crazy…" Espio wheezed.

"Well, Knuckles, now that this latest adventure is at an end, what say you and I go back to my place to spend the night?" Rouge the Bat, the incredibly beautiful and sexy spy and international jewel thief, said seductively as she sidled up to her kind-of-sort-of boyfriend, the red, muscular, and incredibly thick Knuckles the Echidna.

"No thanks, Rouge, I have to get back to Angel Island to protect the Master Emerald! I've been away for too long," Knuckles said seriously.

"Then how about I come back with you and spend the night at your place?" Rouge suggested easily." I can think of a LOT of fun things we could do to… _pass the time_ …"

"Like what?" Knuckles asked curiously.

Rouge grinned lasciviously. "I think you already know."

Knuckles stared at her blankly for a few moments, and then his face lit up. "Oh! You want to play board games?"

Rouge blinked. "What?"

"The guys left some board games with me the last time they visited," Knuckles said. "Said it would give me something to do aside from standing stoically next to the Master Emerald all day. They're a lot of fun, though my pals on the island don't quite seem to understand how to play properly. Mrs. Rock is terrible at bluffing, Bobby the Bush doesn't understand the rules no matter how many times I explain them to him, and Benji the Coconut cheats like crazy if you don't keep a close eye on him."

Rouge blinked repeatedly as she tried to make sense of this. "Mrs. Rock…Bobby the…a Coconut?!" She desperately tried to retake control the situation. "Well, I don't suppose you happen to have a copy of… _Twister_?" She asked, a lustful grin on her face.

"No," Knuckles said. "Why, do you?"

Rouge was taken aback again. "Well, uh, no… Not exactly…But I know a way to play without bothering with a board or spinner…"

Knuckles frowned. "I don't think you're supposed to play the game without a board or spinner, Rouge. That doesn't sound right. I think it's against the rules or something."

Rouge massaged her temples, a vein starting to throb on her forehead. "All right then, if you don't feel like Twister, how about a little… _Wrestling_?"

Knuckles gave her a dubious look. "I don't know, Rouge… I'll admit you've got some pretty strong legs, but I'm pretty sure that if we wrestled for keeps, I'd break you like a twig."

Rouge his eye twitched. Grinding her fangs, she calmly said, "Knuckles, since all of my innuendo seems to be flying right over your head–"

"They are?" Knuckles asked, looking up in surprise. "Funny, I didn't notice. I thought my reflexes were better than that."

Pretending to ignore that for the sake of her sanity, Rouge continued. "Allow me to spell it out for you plainly. I. Want. To. Have. Sex. With. You. There. Did you understand THAT?"

Knuckles' eyes widened, comprehension finally dawning on him. "Oh. OH! Well, uh, this is a little awkward…"

"You think?" Rouge growled.

"While that does sound kind of nice, Rouge, I'm afraid I have to decline," Knuckles said. "I always feel guilty doing it on Angel Island. I feel like the Master Emerald would disapprove… And poor Stony the Statue's been pining for me for years. It wouldn't feel right doing it where she might find out. Everyone up there is such a gossip! It'd break her cold rocky heart, the poor thing!"

"Stony the… Gossip?! You… That…ARGH!" Rouge shouted in exasperation, threw her punch into Knuckles' face, and stormed off.

Knuckles blinked as liquid dripped down his face. "What was that about?"

Fuming and snarling and cursing under her breath, Rouge proceeded to vent her frustrations by kicking at a nearby tree until it snapped in half and came crashing down to the ground with a resounding thud. "That… That knuckleheaded IDIOT! Just how dense is he?! I've NEVER run into a guy that STUPID before! What do I even SEE in that moron?!" She raved.

"He's handsome, very strong, not that bright, and owns the largest, most valuable, most powerful jewel in the entire world?" Rouge's close friend, the red and black self-proclaimed 'Ultimate Lifeform' Shadow the Hedgehog, said calmly, offering her a cup.

"I'm not in the mood for punch," she growled.

"I think you'll find it's something a lot stronger," Shadow said.

Rouge snatched the cup from his gloved hand and downed it in a single gulp. She sighed, visibly relaxing as the liquid gold (not literally, thankfully) poured down her throat. "Awww, that hits the spot. Thank you, Shadow. You always know the right thing to say or do to pull me out of a funk."

"I have plenty of experience in that by now," Shadow said. "Rouge… I know you have a thing for Knuckles, and an even BIGGER thing for that Emerald of his… But don't you think that perhaps it's time for you to cut ties and look for someone else, if keeping up this relationship with him is so stressful? You always worry about how too much stress might give you wrinkles."

Rouge shuddered at that. "Thanks for the reminder… But if not Knuckles, who exactly would you suggest I start seeing? Someone more intelligent, refined, and attentive to my needs? Someone who knows me inside and out, someone whose inner darkness is more in tune with my own black heart, and doesn't secretly frown on my more… Morally ambiguous actions?" She gave him a smoldering half-lidded gaze. "Someone like you, Shadow?"

Shadow blushed and looked away. "I-I mean… Rouge, you're a very beautiful and talented woman, and you can certainly do better than that nimrod…"

"Someone a bit more 'Ultimate,' you mean?" Roush said, smiling, but not cruelly.

Shadow coughed. "…Well…I'd be lying if I said the thought had never crossed my mind…"

A warm smile on her face, Rouge gently touched Shadow's cheek. "Shadow… You're one of my dearest friends, and you hold a very special place in my heart. I DO love you, but…"

"But not like that?" Shadow finished sadly.

Rouge chuckled and kissed him on the cheek. "Well… I wouldn't say THAT…"

Shadow stiffened. "Then… You mean…?"

"Now, don't get your hopes up just yet," Roush said quickly. "I'm not ready to give up on Knuckles just yet. No matter how much he frustrates me, I _do_ have strong feelings for him, and I'm fairly certain he feels the same but is too dumb to realize it. But…If and when it falls through…It'll be nice to know I have someone who cares for me there by my side once it's over."

"And… What if it doesn't fall through?" Shadow asked softly.

Rouge smiled demurely. "Even if Knuckles and I wind up going the distance… Eventually, I'm going to outlast him, just like you'll outlast just about everyone else. And once that happens…Well…If you're willing to wait for me…"

"I will," Shadow promised. "Always."

"Then in that case…" She kissed him on the other cheek. "We'll see what happens in the future, shall we?"

Shadow made a small and totally uncharacteristic smile, looking rather creepy on his face, and squeezed her hand. "Something to look forward to, then."

Rouge nodded. "After all, who knows what the future holds?"

Suddenly, in a clap of thunder and a blinding flash of light, a white hedgehog with an even more ridiculous hairstyle than the other hedgehogs materialized in the middle of the picnic site, scorching the ground with his entrance and causing some leaves and grass to catch fire. "EVERYONE!" Silver the Hedgehog shouted. "I, Silver the Hedgehog, have traveled back in time from the distant FYOO-CHURR to warn you of a great danger!"

Everyone groaned. "Oh great, this guy again," Knuckles grumbled.

"Didn't we just run into him the other week?" An annoyed Vector asked.

"What apocalypse do you suppose he wants us to avert this time?" Cream-the sweet young rabbit who unconditionally loved everyone, even the bad guys—asked in an irritated tone, indicating that even she had her limits with some people, and Silver was one of them.

Sonic sighed. "Seems like we can't go a week without him showing up at least once to warn us of some great impending doom in the near future that we absolutely _have_ to drop everything to avert, to the point where I have to wonder if half these great dangers are even real or if he's just desperately lonely and looking for an excuse to hang out with us." Blaze frowned, wondering, as she often did whenever she saw the emissary of a far-off tomorrow, why something about him seemed familiar…

"I still find it highly skeptical that buying a limited edition of a comic book or a vintage action figure have anything to do with averting an apocalypse," Tails said doubtfully.

"Hey, you think those things are valuable collector's items now, you've no idea how much they go for in the FYOO-CHURR-I MEAN," Silver said dramatically. "The flow of time is vast and complex, and only I, with my psychic powers and intimate knowledge of the timestream, can understand the seemingly innocuous events which can cause a chain reaction which will lead to a golden era or a new dark age!"

"Which is why we have no choice but to trust you whenever you show up, because at least some of the time the threat you're warning us about is REAL, and we can't risk assuming you're lying, ignore you, and doom the world in the process," Espio grumbled.

"And why I have yet to put a bullet through your skull," Shadow growled.

"Not that you could anyway, my psychic powers are too strong! I'd catch anything you threw at me!" Silver bragged.

"Rouge, how is development on those psychic-proof bullets coming along?" Shadow murmured to the bat.

"The GUN R+D department'll have them finished in a few weeks," she replied.

He smiled sinisterly. "Excellent."

"I don't suppose there's something we could do to change the future so much that it's not in constant danger and so you don't need to keep coming back here to fix things all the time?" Blaze asked.

Silver thought carefully for a moment. "No."

"Of course not. That would be too easy," the royal feline grumbled.

"Silver, you have some explaining to do! A while back, you promised me that if I went on a date with you, one day Sonic and I would get married and our child would save the world!" Amy accused Silver. "I've been waiting for months, and it still hasn't happened and he's _still_ with that floozy Blaze!"

Blaze snarled and clenched her fists, embers sparking to life around them. "Now, Blaze, remember what we talked about…" Sonic said cautiously.

"One of these days…" She snarled.

"It will happen! Eventually… And it would've happened a lot sooner if you'd agreed to go to second base with me…" Silver muttered.

"What does baseball have to do with anything?" Cream asked innocently.

"SO! Silver! What horrible crisis do we have to avert this time?" Tails asked loudly.

"Well, you see… Ooh, chili dogs!" Silver said, grabbing one from a plate on a nearby table and enthusiastically beginning to eat it." Ah man, that really hits the spot! We don't have ANY of these in the FYOO-CHURR!"

Sonic gasped, a horrified look on his face. "No chili dogs… In the future?! Oh man, this really IS serious! Silver, what we have to do to stop this horrible, grimdark dystopia from coming into being?!"

"Huh? Oh, that's not why I'm here this time… Though I should probably remember that, that'd be a good excuse to come back later," Silver admitted. "No, I'm here for a far graver matter!"

"Graver than a world without chili dogs?!" Sonic asked incredulously.

"There ARE worse things, faker," Shadow said.

"Blasphemy!" Sonic proclaimed.

"IS-IT-ME? DO-I-DESTROY-THE-WORLD?" Omega asked hopefully.

"My greatest enemy, the evil Dr. Eggman Nega, is up to no good again!" Silver declared.

"OH,-DARN," Omega grumbled.

Blaze started. "Eggman Nega!?"

"HIS Eggman Nega, not yours," Sonic reminded her. "I…think. Pretty sure they aren't one and the same…"

Blaze blinked. "Oh, right, there are two of them…maybe…That gets really confusing."

"Yes, yes it does. Anyway, in yet another attempt to prove his superiority over his ancestor, the Dr. Eggman of your time, Eggman Nega has embarked upon a diabolical scheme to rewrite history!" Silver explained.

"Again?" Rouge asked, unimpressed.

"Yes, again!" Silver said.

"Is this going to involve us splitting into pairs and racing each other to get to the end of a Zone or beat a boss again? I didn't like that very much," Knuckles said suspiciously.

"No, nothing like that!" Silver promised. "Eggman Nega's latest plot is eviler by far than any he's embarked on yet! He seeks to travel into each of your pasts, to a crucial, pivotal moment in your lives, a turning point that defined who you were and what you would become, making you into the heroes-Or antiheroes in some of your cases-That you are now! And once he reaches those defining moments…He will undo them utterly, changing history completely and causing you to become someone completely different from who you are now, into people incapable of stopping him from taking over the world!"

Everyone looked startled and alarmed at this. This really _did_ sound serious. "That's… Actually pretty fiendish," said a horrified-looking Sonic.

"If he does that, you will never be the great hero you are now, "said a shocked Blaze. "We would never have met and fallen in love, and your world would probably have been destroyed or conquered several times over long ago." Her brow furrowed in concern. "Not to mention what would've happened to _my_ world if I had never risen to power and claimed my kingdom…"

"I… Might never have become the person I am now, in a very literal sense," said a very worried-looking Tails.

"Th-that meanie!" Gasped Cream. "What if he makes it so that Mommy never had me? Or I never met Cheese or Chocola Chao?"

"Chao, Chao!" Cheese agreed.

"I might be… Ordinary!" Rouge gasped, shocked. "What an awful thought!"

"Rouge, no matter the timeline, you would _never_ be just ordinary," Shadow assured her, causing her to smile gratefully, though inside he found himself wondering what Eggman Nega could possibly do to HIS past that would make it worse than it already was.

"I-MIGHT-NEVER-BE-PROGRAMMED-TO-BE-A-WEAPON-OF-MASS-DESTRUCTION! I-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN-MADE-INTO-A-TOILET-CLEANING-ROBOT!" Omega cried.

"The three of us might never have met or formed the Chaotix detective agency!" Charmy said.

"…Why is that a bad thing again?" Espio asked. Vector smacked him.

"I might never have fallen in love with Sonic!" Amy screamed.

"…Hey, do you think maybe we could let Eggman Nega change just her past and nobody else's?" Sonic pleaded. "I mean, really, would the world be a worse place if Amy weren't excessively stalking me all the time?"

"Sonic!" Amy cried, aghast.

"It's probably a better idea not to risk it. Butterfly effect, and all that," Tails said.

Sonic sighed. "Right, right. Stupid quantum butterflies…"

"Wait, if he can travel that far back in time to change our pasts, why doesn't he just kill us when we're kids or something instead of bothering with something as needlessly complicated as this?" Asked Knuckles in a surprising moment of insight which nobody paid attention to.

Big, who hadn't even noticed Silver's arrival, continued to blissfully fish in the punch bowl.

"Okay, Silver. We'll help you stop Eggman Nega, for the sake of all our futures. What do we have to do?" Sonic asked.

"Absolutely nothing!" Silver said.

Sonic blinked. "…Okay, that's not the answer I was expecting."

"For any of you to travel back into your own pasts could have catastrophic consequences for the entire timestream," Silver explained. "Running into your past selves might create a temporal shockwave which could threaten to tear the entirety of time and space apart and destroy reality itself!"

"I met my past self once, and nothing bad happened," Sonic argued. "Heck, we had an awesome adventure together! It was pretty cool, even if it did bring back a few bad memories…"

"Uh, Sonic?" Tails said. "All of reality was already sort of collapsing because of that time-eating monster Eggman and Robotnik were in control of when that happened, remember?"

"Oh. Good point," Sonic said.

"Is he right, Tails? Would something really bad happen if we went back and met our past selves?" Amy asked.

"Hey, why are you asking him? I'm the time traveler here!" Silver protested.

"Yes, but Tails is smarter than you and we trust him more," Knuckles said.

Silver raised a finger into the air and opened his mouth to protest, paused, and grudgingly lowered his hand. "…Fair enough," he grumbled.

"Well, temporal mechanics aren't really my specialty, but if I've learned anything from watching every episode of Dr. Who ever, it's that crossing your own timeline and messing with your past is, in in most circumstances, a very bad thing and can result in reality breaking down and you getting eaten by horrible monsters from beyond time," Tails said.

They considered this for a moment. "Well, that's good enough for me," Sonic said finally.

"I suppose Dr. Who is as reliable a source for information on time travel as anything else," Shadow said, not wanting to let on that he was secretly a fan.

"I don't want to get eaten by horrible monsters from beyond time," Cream squeaked.

"None of us do, Cream. None of us do," Amy said.

Charmy nodded. "Yeah, being eaten by a shark would be bad enough, I don't wanna run into something like that!"

"Really? You're trusting advice from an—admittedly really awesome-sci-fi TV show over an actual, real-life time traveler?" Silver asked incredulously.

"Yes," everyone said. Silver sighed.

"But if we can't go back in time to prevent Eggman Nega from altering our pasts, how are we going to stop him?" Espio asked.

"YOU can't," Silver said. "But _I_ can! After all, it's not MY past I'd be traveling back into, just yours! Therefore, I should be able to avoid any reality-ending paradoxes or horrible monsters from beyond time, so long as I'm careful."

The others nodded and made noises of agreement, seeing the sense in this. "But if that's the case, why did you come back here to tell us about this if there's nothing we can do to help you?" Blaze asked.

"Oh, but there IS something you can do to help me," Silver said. "You see, after he finished doing his research to find out what he needed to do to change your pasts for the worst, Eggman Nega scrambled the files at the historical archives so it would be almost impossible for me to figure out when and where to go after him. Fortunately, we were able to recover enough of the data to get a general idea of where and when he's going to attack most of your pasts. While I'm fairly certain I know when and where he's going to go, I'm not exactly sure WHAT he intends to change for most of you, except for Shadow and Omega, whose files are conveniently the only ones we were able to restore completely for reasons I won't bother going into. As such, I figured that the quickest way to stop him before he could change the FYOO-CHURR would be to travel back in time and meet you all in person so I could learn about the relevant turning points in your lives firsthand. That way, I'll know how the timeline is supposed to go and can make sure that any changes Eggman Nega makes can be easily reversed. "

"…Huh…that's actually pretty smart," Shadow said grudgingly.

"And the information he gets from us will probably be more accurate than what he would've gotten in the future, even if Eggman Nega HADN'T scrambled the files," Tails agreed. "After all, Silver's from at least two hundred years up the timestream, so it wouldn't be surprising if a lot of important information about our personal lives was forgotten or exaggerated a bit over time."

"Like how most of the information about my own people is just legends and hearsay by now because whatever happened to make me the last of my kind happened a really, really long time ago?" Knuckles asked.

Tails nodded. "Precisely! Well, that or because the echidnas were an incredibly isolationist and incredibly xenophobic culture and didn't want anyone to know a lot about them."

"Either one works for me!" Knuckles said cheerfully.

Sonic stroked his chin in thought, a smile spreading across his face. Blaze's heart skipped a beat when she saw it, recognizing that expression on his face for what it was; a sign that Sonic was about to do something probably stupidly reckless that he was sure to enjoy immensely. She loved that smile. "You know… This could actually be kind of fun."

"How can doing nothing but trusting in Future Trunks here to save our past selves while we just sit here and do nothing possibly be fun?" Rouge asked skeptically.

"I am not FYOO-CHURR Trunks!" Silver protested.

"You're right, Future Trunks is actually an interesting character," Shadow said, eliciting snickers from several of the others. Silver fumed.

"Now just hear me out," Sonic said. "I know this might not be the sort of pulse pounding, high-octane, super intense adventure we all love–"

"I don't love it," Espio said.

Sonic ignored him. "But I think we can get some fun out of this all the same. I mean, when you think about it, how much do we really know about each other? We've all been fighting alongside each other for years and going on all sorts of adventures… But how much of each other's pasts do we really know? I mean, yeah, we ALL know Shadow's past, 'cause he wouldn't stop yakking about it during the whole alien invasion thing–"

"I was NOT yakking," Shadow grumbled.

"And Omega doesn't really have much of a past because he was just built by Dr. Eggman and left to guard Sleeping Beauty for a while," Sonic continued.

"I-WILL-DESTROY-YOU-ALL-ONE-DAY," Omega vowed.

"I'll help," Shadow grumbled.

"And Knuckles has even LESS of a past since we all know the Master Emerald spawned him into existence one day to defend it," Sonic added.

"That's not what happened!" Knuckles shouted. He hesitated. "At least, I don't THINK it is…"

"But there's got to be a lot the rest of us don't know about each other!" Sonic continued. "I mean, for example, I've got no clue how the Chaotix formed their agency or met each other, or what motivated Rouge to get into the jewel thief thing and then somehow start working for GUN, and I'm betting there's a lot about me that nobody else here except Blaze or Tails or possibly Amy due to her disturbing fixation on me knows! We can turn this into a fun teambuilding exercise, swapping stories and learning all about each other and becoming better friends!"

"Blue Hedgehog, if you say anything about the 'superpower of teamwork,' I'm out of here," Shadow said.

"Now hold on a minute Shadow, I can see where he's coming from," Rouge said.

He gave her a surprised look. "You do?"

She nodded. "Certainly. I can see all sorts of benefits we can get from learning more about each other… Humiliating blackmail, for example…"

Shadow perked up at this. "I second this insipid yet irritatingly compelling idea of Sonic's."

"If Sonic suggested it, it has to be a good idea!" Amy concurred, a starry look in her eyes. Blaze growled, smoke starting to rise from her curled fists.

"I'd certainly love to hear more about everyone else," Cream said kindly.

"Eh, why not?" Vector said with a shrug. "It'd certainly fill in a bunch of blanks on your personal files back at the office, and besides, it could be fun."

"It could also be pointlessly stupid," Espio said.

"It might," the alligator agreed. "But if we don't, there's a chance that Eggman Nega will rewrite our pasts completely!"

Charmy nodded. "Yeah, the three of us might never have met, for instance, or we might never have formed the Chaotix Detective Agency! Wouldn't that be awful?"

"…Can I have some time to think that over?" Espio asked.

"THE-MORE-I-LEARN-ABOUT-YOU,-THE-EASIER-IT-WILL-BE-TO-DESTROY-YOU-ALL," Omega said. He paused, then added, "EXCEPT-FOR-SHADOW-AND-ROUGE,-BECAUSE-THEY-ARE-MY-FRIENDS."

Rouge smiled fondly. "Awww, isn't that sweet? We love you too, you big lug!" Shadow grunted, but the corner of his lip twitched upwards, implying he felt the same way.

Big continued to fish, oblivious to everyone.

"All right, Silver, looks like we're doing this! So, what do you need us to do?" Sonic asked.

"Like I said, I have a GENERAL idea of what and when Eggman Nega's trying to change, but I don't know most of the specific details," Silver said, taking out a small, compact, high-tech-looking device. "I'll ask you some questions regarding the events that I believe Eggman Nega is going after, and this gadget here will record everything, so I'll have an easier time keeping the facts straight. Would you like to go first, Sonic?"

Sonic glanced at Blaze, who nodded, and he shrugged. "Sure, why not?"

"Wait, don't the rest of us have any say in this?" Knuckles protested.

"Nope! Too slow, Knucklehead!" Sonic said, wagging a finger in the echidna's face.

"Gah! I hate it when he does that!" Knuckles snarled.

"Ask away, Silver. My past is an open book," Sonic said.

Silver nodded gratefully and pressed a button on his recording device, turning it on. "I'll hold you to that, Sonic. My question for you is… **How exactly did you obtain your super speed?** "

…

And that's a wrap for the first chapter!

Now for a little explanation on how this story is going to go: each chapter, one or more of the heroes will tell what more or less amounts to their origin story. I already have all the stories planned in my head, but what I DON'T have is the order they're going to go in. Sonic's origin will take up the next chapter, naturally, but who comes after that is up to you, the reader. The only exceptions are Shadow and Omega, who, as Sonic pointed out, everyone knows the origins of, and Blaze, whose planned backstory may be a bit longer than the others and I was hoping to save for last, though if there is enough demand, I may reconsider.

With that in mind, who should go after Sonic? **Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Rouge, Cream, Big** (yes, really), or **the** **Chaotix**?


	2. Sonic's Tail

Time for chapter 2 and the origin of Sonic the Hedgehog! Though that's not ALL we're going to learn in this tail—sorry, tale…

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me

…

"How did Sonic get his super speed? Well that's a stupid question! He was born with it, obviously!" Knuckles said with a snort.

"Actually, Knucklehead, I WASN'T," Sonic said.

Most of the group did a double take. "Wait, what?!" Vector demanded.

Shadow narrowed his eyes in thought. "He wasn't born with it? But then how…"

"That's right!" Amy said, pleased that she knew something the others didn't. "My beloved Sonic was born with the same heightened jumping, running, and rolling in spiked balls ability as the average hedgehog, but he was nowhere NEAR as fast as he is now!"

"Well, I wouldn't say I had the same abilities as the AVERAGE hedgehog," Sonic corrected Amy. "I was always able to jump a bit higher and run and spin a bit faster than other hedgehogs, but you're right, I was nowhere near as fast as I am now. Certainly not fast enough to run on top of water or break the sound barrier."

"But… Then how did you become so fast?" Asked the baffled Knuckles.

Sonic grinned. "See, this is exactly what I'm talking about! We've known each other for ages, but none of you ever thought to ask me something like this! Well, I'd be more than happy to tell the tale."

"This is going to be good, I always love this story!" Tails commented.

Blaze nodded. "As do I."

"I know the story from my extensive research into Sonic's personal life, but I've never heard it firsthand! This is going to be incredible!" Amy said giddily.

"As well as informative. I'm rather curious to find out how a slightly above-average hedgehog could somehow acquire skills almost as great as mine," Shadow said.

Rouge raised an eyebrow. "'Almost?'"

Shadow crossed his arms in glared at her sternly. "Yes. Almost."

Sonic chuckled. "Yeah, just keep telling yourself that, Shads. Anyway, it all started many years ago…"

The air around Sonic started wavering and shimmering. "Huh? What the heck is this?" The blue hedgehog asked in confusion, causing the strange visual effect to stop.

"Oh, sorry," Silver said apologetically. "It's a side effect of my recording device. Using incredibly complicated FYOO-CHUR science and mind reading technology, it's able to scan your mind while you're telling a story, so that it can project images from your memory that all of us can see as well as hear and give us a more complete experience."

"Oh. Cool," Sonic said.

"Wow! That's pretty impressive!" Tails said. "I don't suppose you could let me have a look at that?"

"No," Silver said. Tails pouted.

"Tell us the story! Tell us the story!" Charmy urged.

"Okay, okay," Sonic said. "It all began many years ago…"

The air began to waver and shimmer again. DOODLY-DOOP! DOODLY-DOOP! DOODLY-DOOP!

"Okay, what that was that?!" Sonic demanded, startled.

"Is that another side effect of your recorder?" Tails asked.

"No, I've no idea what's making that noise," Silver said in puzzlement, shaking his recorder.

"SORRY, THAT-WAS-ME," Omega apologized. "I-THOUGHT-IT-WOULD-ADD-ATMOSPHERE."

"Oh. Well, don't do it again. It's kind of annoying," Silver said.

"MY-BAD," Omega said.

"Can I start my story for real now? No more interruptions?" Sonic asked pointedly.

"Go ahead, beloved. If anyone else tries to interrupt, I shall burn them alive," Blaze said.

"…Isn't that a little excessive?" Charmy asked nervously.

"No," said Blaze.

"Right! Let's do this for real this time!" Sonic said, rubbing his hands together. "Okay! It all started many years ago…"

The air began to waver and shimmer, and as Sonic narrated, an image began to appear in the air…

…

It was a nice, warm, sunny day in the city of Southopolis on South Island. Sonic, a young, short, somewhat chubby brown hedgehog was currently making the most of his summer vacation by playing with his pet dog Muttski on the front lawn of his house, one of many nearly identical homes occupying a fairly standard neighborhood in one of the city's suburbs.

…

"Wait, why were you brown?" asked a confused Knuckles.

Blaze raised a hand, starting to form a fireball, but Sonic grabbed her wrist. "That's not necessary, Blaze. And it's a perfectly reasonable question. I was born brown, and I became blue later, as I'll explain shortly."

"Oh," Knuckles said. "Okay."

"Wait, you had a _house?_ In the _suburbs?_ " asked an incredulous Espio.

"Well, yeah, what'd you think, I was homeless or something?" Sonic joked. There was an awkward pause, and most of his friends wouldn't meet his eye. He frowned. "Seriously?!"

"Well, uh, it's just…" Knuckles fidgeted.

"You just seem like…that type…" Vector said.

"What type?" Sonic demanded.

"You know…a free spirit, wandering everywhere without a place to tie you down…always traveling, never staying in one place for too long…" Rouge said vaguely.

"Just because I like running all over the place doesn't mean I'm a homeless vagrant or anything! I'm fast enough that I can get home from just about anywhere I want if I want a nice warm bed or a roof over my head or a free meal," Sonic said, somewhat miffed.

"Or mine, if he's feeling lazy," Tails muttered, rolling his eyes.

"That reminds me, it's my mom's birthday soon, I should probably get something for her…" Sonic murmured.

"…You have _parents?!_ " Knuckles yelled in disbelief.

"Yeah, why, did you think I was…oh come on, really you guys?!" Sonic asked angrily, seeing guilty looks on many faces. "Look, just because lots of heroes are orphans doesn't mean I am, too! That's an unfair stereotype! Not _all_ of us get into the game because of an exaggerated feeling of grief or loss!"

"Should I be offended?" Shadow muttered.

"Mr. Sonic is right. I still have my Mommy, and Daddy's alive, even if he doesn't come over much anymore," Cream agreed.

"My dad's fine, though it's been a while since the last time I saw him," Tails said sadly.

"My parents are, too…maybe I should call them…" Amy murmured, looking guilty.

"It's been a while since I've talked to my dad…" Vector muttered.

"I never want to see mine again," Espio said flatly.

"I haven't seen my parents in forever, but I know they're out there somewhere, looking for me! And one day, I'll see them again!" Charmy said confidently, missing the uneasy looks Vector and Espio shot each other.

"I haven't seen my mom in a while… But I'm fairly certain we'll be meeting again soon," Rouge said with a fond smile. She sighed. "I really miss her…"

"MARIA!" Shadow shouted. Everyone stared at him. He flushed. "Sorry. Force of habit."

"MY-CREATOR-IS-DOCTOR-EGGMAN-AND-I-SHALL-ONE-DAY-DESTROY-HIM," Omega vowed.

Big said nothing, because he was still fishing and not paying any attention to what was going on around him.

"I've absolutely no idea who my parents, if I actually have any, are," Blaze said. "As far as I know, I was born in flame."

"'Born in flame?' What do you mean by that?" Rouge asked.

"You will understand once it is my turn to tell a story," Blaze said.

"I don't have parents…" Knuckles moped.

"It's been ages since I've seen MY progenitor… How I miss you, cold, unfeeling robot arm," Silver said wistfully. "But enough of this! Sonic, you must continue your story!"

Sonic nodded. "Right, right. Now where was I? Oh, right… I was playing with my beloved dog, Muttski…"

…

"Fetch!" Sonic called, throwing a stick past his dog.

Muttski sat in place, panting and drooling.

"Roll over!" Sonic commanded.

Muttski sat in place, panting and drooling.

"Play dead!" Sonic ordered.

Muttski sat in place, panting and drooling.

"Shake!" Sonic yelled.

Muttski sat in place, panting and drooling.

Sonic frowned, deep in thought for a moment. He perked up, getting an idea. "Sit!"

Muttski sat in place, panting and drooling.

"Good boy!" Sonic cried, rushing over and affectionately rubbing and scratching his pet, who barked and enthusiastically licked him back, causing him to laugh.

An elderly human with wild white hair wearing a lab coat, an ugly Hawaiian shirt, and goggles on his forehead poked his head over the fence separating Sonic's yard from the one next door. "Sonic! I hate to interrupt your bonding session with your lesser-evolved animal companion, but I was wondering if I could have your help with something?"

"Huh? Sure thing, Doc! What's up?" Sonic asked, reluctantly pushing his dog away, patting him on the head as an apology before walking over to speak to the human.

Sonic's next-door neighbor, Dr. Emile Blue, was a rather eccentric mad scientist whose inventions had a 50-50 chance of either vastly improving the lives of everyone in town by leaps and bounds or spectacularly blowing up in his face. (Sometimes both.) Sonic had known him for most of his life, and often helped the doctor out with his experiments when he had nothing better to do with his time. His parents allowed it, despite the not-too-slim risk involved, because they figured Sonic might actually learn more from the doctor than he ever did in school. (They were right, in a fashion. Sonic certainly learned more about how to make things explode than he ever would have from watching television!)

"I'm on the verge of a scientific breakthrough that could revolutionize the way we look at life itself!" The doctor proclaimed.

"You say that all the time," Sonic pointed out.

"Yes, but this time I mean it!" The doctor said.

"You say that all the time too," Sonic pointed out.

"Yes, but this time I REALLY mean it!" The doctor emphasized. "However, if this experiment is to have any chance of success, I'm going to need your help, Sonic. I don't suppose you could spare a few minutes to help out your favorite neighbor?"

Sonic thought about it for a minute. "Can we get ice cream afterwards?"

"Certainly!" Doc Blue said.

"Awesome! Oh, wait, I should check with my Mom first," Sonic said. He turned towards his house and shouted," MOM! Can I help Doc Blue with an experiment?"

One of the windows on the front of Sonic's house opened, and Sonic's mother, Bernadette, a very pretty blue hedgehog with blonde hair and a purple dress, poked her head out. "That depends, dear. Is he going to raise the dead again?"

"That was just one time! ONE TIME!" Doc said in exasperation.

"I don't think so," Sonic said.

"Is there a high likelihood of whatever he's doing destroying the planet, tearing open a hole in the fabric of space and time, or turning you into a human?" Bernadette rest.

"I cannot say with 100% absolute certainty that none of those events will occur, because nothing in life is ever completely certain, and any fool who says otherwise is either lying or an idiot," Doc said. "However, I am relatively certain that the chances of any of those eventualities happening are slim to nonexistent. ESPECIALLY Sonic turning into a human."

"Thank goodness," Sonic said with a shiver.

"Well, all right then," Bernadette said with a shrug. "Just so long as you're back in time for dinner, honey!"

"Sure thing, Mom!" Sonic said.

…

"So let me get this straight… You lived next door to a mad scientist, and your mom was okay with you hanging out with him and performing dangerous experiments?!" an incredulous Vector asked.

"Yep," Sonic said.

"Dang. My parents weren't nearly that cool…" The crocodile grumbled.

"Mommy is fine with me playing with the neighbors, but none of them are mad scientists," Cream said. "At least, I don't think they are."

"Wait a second… Mad scientist… Dangerous experiment… Sonic, is whatever you and Doc Blue did what led to the rise of Dr. Eggman?!" Knuckles asked.

Everyone stared at the echidna in confusion. "What? No, that's… where'd you get that idea from?" Asked the perplexed Sonic

"Uh… I just… Thought… Nevermind…" Knuckles muttered in embarrassment.

…

Sonic and Doc entered the scientist's laboratory through his garage, passing his vintage DeLorean in the process. (The Doc had modified and upgraded the car so many times, Sonic wouldn't be surprised if one day, it gained the ability to fly or travel through time.) As usual, the doctor's laboratory was full of fascinating and complex equipment and machinery the young hedgehog did not fully understand. There were consoles and panels covered in flashing lights and dials; monitors showing feeds from all over the world; bizarre devices crackling with electricity or glowing with a strange and eerie power; chemistry sets bubbling and steaming with mysterious fluids; and there was even a stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling! (Sonic asked the Doc once what the alligator was for, and the scientist had confessed that he didn't actually remember, but kept it because he thought it 'looked nice.')

They were not alone in the laboratory, and the doctor's housemate trotted over to greet them on all four legs. "Hey, Miles!" Sonic said, picking up the small orange fox wearing a collar and nuzzling him. "How are you doing today?" The Fox yipped a few times, but did not reply in any intelligible manner, for he was just a simple animal, not a Mobian like Sonic.

…

Rouge blinked. "Miles? But…Wait…Isn't that…" She stared at Tails in confusion and disbelief, as did many of the others once they recalled that 'Tails' wasn't the fox's birth name.

Tails smirked and tapped his nose. "Don't worry, it'll all make sense soon," he assured them.

…

"He's been doing just fine, thanks. As you can see, all of his fur seems to have grown back from the last experiment," Doc said.

The Doc had found the young fox foraging through his trash one day and immediately took a liking to him, cleaning him up, getting him fixed up, and giving him a home. He also frequently used him as a test subject in his experiments, claiming that while Sonic was great, there were times it couldn't hurt to have an assistant who actually knew what he was doing. (Sonic was fairly certain he was joking. Probably.)

"So, what are we doing today, Doc?" Sonic asked.

"Come along and I'll show you. Oh, and bring Miles, he's absolutely crucial to the experiment," the Doc said.

Carrying the fox, Sonic followed the scientist deeper into the laboratory, passing through a decontamination chamber and into a small room with some kind of incredibly high-tech treadmill on one end and a large capsule of some sort on the other. Various cables and power cords snaked across the chamber to connect the two, all of them converging on a metal pedestal in the center of the room with a glowing blue gemstone secured by a metal clamp beneath a glass dome. Something deep within Sonic stirred when he gazed upon the blue jewel, and he felt mysteriously drawn to it. "Doc… Is that what I think it is?"

The Doc grinned. "If you're thinking that's a Chaos Emerald… Then yes, Sonic, that's exactly what you think it is!"

"Whoa!" Sonic said in amazement, staring at the gemstone in awe. "My dad said that the Chaos Emeralds are the things that created our kind! He's told me all sorts of stories about how lots of famous heroes throughout history have used their limitless power to save the world from countless villains! He even claims that a good number of them are from our family! How the heck did you manage to get your hands on one?"

The Doc looked rather uncomfortable for a moment. "That's… Not important, Sonic. But…ah… On a completely unrelated note, if some Libyan terrorists should ever come by asking for me or any uranium that I may or may not have stolen from them… You've never heard of me before. Understand?"

Sonic did not understand, but he nodded anyway. He knew well enough by now that it was a good idea to heed the Doc's directions, even if they didn't always make sense at the time. "So, Doc, is whatever experiment we're doing today involve this Chaos Emerald?"

The Doc nodded. "Precisely! Sonic, you mentioned that your father told you that the Chaos Emeralds are responsible for the creation of your species. Archaeological, historical, and scientific evidence all seem to point to this being the case. Mobians first appeared in the world thousands of years ago following the first recorded appearance of the Chaos Emeralds, shortly after a mysterious incident that those who study it call the 'Super Genesis Wave,' an event triggered by the Chaos Emeralds that somehow induced hyper-accelerated evolution in numerous animals around the world, leading to the rise of the earliest ancestors of the Mobian species as we know it. For years, scientists have attempted to replicate this event using Chaos Drives or genuine Chaos Emeralds so we may better understand the genesis of your species and gain greater insights into the workings of Chaos energy and the way it interacts with life itself, and maybe even figure out why Mobians are able to naturally harness it much more easily than humans can, but up until now, nobody's ever been able to get it right."

"And I'm guessing that _you_ figured out a way to get it right?" Sonic guessed.

The Doc grinned. "I believe so. Tell me, Sonic, have you ever heard of the space colony ARK?"

…

Shadow stiffened at this.

Amy groaned. "Oh great, ANOTHER thing tying back to that?"

"I thought we were through with that for good after the Black Arms invasion," Knuckles complained.

"Shh! I want to see where this is going!" Charmy hissed.

…

"No, I can't say that I have, Doc," Sonic confessed.

The Doc sighed. "Well, that doesn't surprise me. The world seems to be doing its best to pretend that it never existed… It's like this, Sonic. Nearly 50 years ago, the government funded construction of a massive space colony for use in planetary defense and scientific and military research. Scientists from all over the world, the best and brightest our planet has ever produced, were selected to board the ARK so that they could develop all sorts of new and incredible technologies and innovations unlike anything the world has ever known out in space, for the benefit of man and Mobiankind. My grandfather, Professor Emmett Blue, was one such scientist. He was my hero ever since I was a little boy, and the first time I met him and he showed me around his laboratory, I knew that I must dedicate my life to science, just like he did, to use my great intellect to better the world and its people."

"So what went wrong?" Sonic asked, rightfully perceiving that if this ARK thing were such a big deal, and had done so much, then logically he should've heard about it by now.

The Doc's face fell. "That's just the thing. To this day, nobody's really sure. One day, all communications to the ARK ceased. There were rumors of some sort of outbreak. The military went up to investigate, and…"

"And what?" Sonic asked.

The Doc shrugged. "And nothing. That's it. There was a brief statement from the government afterwards that the ARK had been shut down, and that was that. All inquiries from the media or public as to what happened were answered with stony silence. My family got a brief and very impersonal message that my grandfather was dead, and nothing more. We weren't satisfied by this, naturally, and my father tried making inquiries, but…when he started asking too many questions, he was… _Strongly_ encouraged to… Stop."

Sonic's eyes widened. "That's… Pretty damn creepy, Doc."

The Doc nodded solemnly. "Indeed. One of the driving questions of my life, another of the reasons I chose to dedicate myself to science, is to find out what really happened, all those years ago."

…

"Wow," Amy said as Cream sniffed and sobbed and the others looked solemn and deep in thought. "That's… pretty dark."

"We never really thought about that, did we?" Knuckles asked, looking upset. "We all know how Shadow was affected by what happened on the ARK, and the Robotnik family, and GUN Commander… But they couldn't have been the only people up there. How many other families here on Earth were affected by that horrible tragedy?"

"I never thought about that, either," Shadow confessed, enraged at the government and military for doing all this and at himself for not thinking about how others might have been affected by it. "I was too wrapped up in my own anger towards what happened to think about what might have happened to everyone else… It never even OCCURRED to me to search for the families of the rest of the staff and scientists up there!" He snarled and punched a nearby tree. "I'm such an idiot! Even now, despite knowledge of the ARK incident finally being revealed to the public, they're still probably waiting for answers… Answers only I could give them! Or, well, GUN Commander, except he won't, because he's an asshole."

"If you want, after this we can start tracking them down," Rouge suggested. "I'm sure there's a lot you can tell them about the people you knew up there that they'd love to hear about."

Shadow nodded. "I believe that would not be a bad idea, Rouge. But Sonic… Why did you never tell me that you knew someone who was descended from one of the scientists on the ARK?!"

"I tried to!" Sonic protested. "Lots of times!"

Shadow blinked. "You did?"

"Yeah!" Sonic said.

…

"You know, this space colony of yours isn't half bad," Sonic commented as he and Shadow ran across a collapsing walkway through space, heading towards the Eclipse Cannon pointed at Earth, each of them wielding a Chaos Emerald, though only one was real. "A good friend of mine had a grandfather who worked up here. I don't suppose you knew him? Prof. Emmet–"

"THIS IS THE ULTIMATE! CHAOS SPEAR!" Shadow shouted, hurling yellow energy bolts at the blue hedgehog.

"Okay, another time then," Sonic said, dodging the spears.

…

"It's good to see you're still alive, Shadow! I figured it would take more than falling through the stratosphere to kill you, we super hedgehogs are pretty tough, after all!" Sonic said as he and Shadow exchanged Homing Attacks in the depths of Lost Jungle while their teammates fought alongside them. "Say, maybe after this is over, we can go see a friend of mine, I think he'd be pretty interested in meeting you –"

"DESTROY! DESTROY! DESTROY!" Omega shouted, firing missiles at Sonic.

"Okay, another time then," Sonic said, dodging the explosive volley.

…

"So, Shadow, I hear you've been going around doing just about everything anyone tells you to do in some desperate attempt to learn more about your past," Sonic said as he and Shadow sped through the depths of the Black Arms base of operations, the Black Comet. "Well, it just so happens that I might know somebody who might be able to–"

"Not now, Sonic! I have to flip all the switches to activate the force field protecting the comet's core because Black Doom told me to, so that I can finally get that last DAMN Chaos Emerald!" Shadow said. Some of the alien invaders started shooting at him, causing the black hedgehog to scream, "WHY ARE YOU SHOOTING AT ME?! I'M ON YOUR SIDE, DAMMIT!...FOR THE TIME BEING!"

"Okay, another time then," Sonic said, curling into a Spin Dash to charge at the alien horrors.

…

"Wow, Shadow, this sure brings back memories!" Sonic commented as he and Shadow ran down a walkway through space, this climactic battle recreated thanks to the power of the Time Eater. "Say, while we're here, that reminds me, there's some guy I've been meaning to talk to you about–"

"THIS IS THE ULTIMATE! CHAOS SPEAR!" Shadow shouted, hurling yellow energy bolts at the blue hedgehog.

"Okay, another time then," Sonic said, dodging the spears.

…

"And I guess another time is now," Sonic finished.

Shadow tried to hide the flush of embarrassment as several of the others, including Rouge, snickered at him. "Yes, well… I believe that I would like to meet your friend at some point, Sonic. I knew his grandfather. He and the Professor were colleagues, and I believe that they were close enough friends that they had no problem sharing each other's theories and work when either of them was stuck on something. In fact, I believe that some of the science that went into creating me was originally concocted by Prof. Blue."

"What happened to him?" Tails asked, looking oddly intent.

Shadow shrugged. "I don't know. It's possible he was killed during the attack, or perhaps he died in prison like the Professor." His face softened. "He was a good man. Maria… Maria liked him. His grandson was right to venerate him. He didn't deserve whatever happened to him."

"That poor man…it's so horrible!" Cream wept.

"Those GUN bastards… How could they do that?!" Amy snarled.

"WE-SHOULD-KILL-THEM-ALL," Omega suggested a little too enthusiastically.

"Sure, I'm game," Blaze said with a bloodthirsty grin.

Surprisingly, Shadow shook his head. "While I might have once wanted nothing more than to do just that… There is no point. Pretty much everyone who was involved in the ARK debacle is long dead or retired, so there is no point in seeking retribution any longer. While I am not exactly comfortable with GUN as it is now, nor am I exactly friends with its commander, I… Reluctantly concede that they are a better organization now than they were 50 years ago, and do not deserve destruction."

"Wow, Shadow," Vector said. "That's not something I thought I'd ever hear you say."

"I thought once you had a grudge, you never let it go," Knuckles said.

Shadow shrugged. "I have tried to move past that…and anyway, if I didn't feel that way about the current incarnation of GUN, why would I go on so many missions for them?"

"I thought it was because otherwise you'd be an unemployed bum and because you still need to pay off the MASSIVE amount of property damage and debt you owe them for wrecking all their stuff and nearly destroying the world twice over," Charmy joked.

Shadow's eye twitched. "There is that as well, yes. Sonic, where can I find this 'Doc' you speak of? Is he still in Southopolis?"

"He still lives there, yeah," Sonic said. "Unfortunately, he's not in right now, and I doubt he will be for quite some time. He's up in space at the moment, working with a bunch of other scientists to fix the Moon."

Shadow blinked. "The… Moon? Oh, that's right… We… blew it up…" He looked embarrassed.

"Oh, so that's why the world hasn't been destroyed yet due to gravitational shifts or debris from a shattered stellar object," Espio said. "I was wondering about that."

"What were you thinking anyway? Blowing up the moon?! That was just nuts!" Amy demanded.

"In my defense, I was trying to destroy the world anyway, so it's not like I really cared whether or not the moon suffered," Shadow said defensively. "And, ah, to be honest… We weren't TRYING to destroy the moon."

They stared at him in disbelief. "… If you weren't trying to destroy the moon, then why is half of it disintegrated?" Cream asked.

Shadow grimaced in embarrassment and Rouge chuckled. "What Dr. Eggman was TRYING to do was carve his face into the moon in a fit of vanity. However, he gave the cannon a little too much power, and, well…"

Despite the ridiculousness of this, and the consequences of such actions, they couldn't help laughing. "Yeah, that sounds like Egghead all right," Sonic chuckled, wiping away a tear.

"I suppose we should be grateful he didn't try carving his face into the planet instead, or Dark Gaia might have been woken up a few years too early," Tails joked. "Well, even earlier, anyway."

Sonic nodded. "Yeah, and I'll bet he'd be even crankier than he already was!"

"Hey, Silver, is the moon all right in your time?" Charmy asked.

Silver nodded. "Yes, the moon is fine, thanks to Doc Blue's work… But while all of this was well and good and informative, it's distracted us from the real topic: how Sonic got his speed!"

"Right, right," Sonic said. "So anyway…"

…

"So what's all this got to do with whatever we're working on today?" Sonic asked the Doc.

"Well, when the military covered everything up, they confiscated and/or destroyed most of my grandfather's work," the Doc said sadly. "However, through means I'd rather not discuss, I was able to obtain a few of his old research journals and notes. They were heavily encrypted, naturally, but I've been able to decipher some of it… And let me tell you, I was astounded by some of what he came up with! I always knew he was a genius, but my grandfather had ideas decades, if not CENTURIES ahead of his time." He grimaced. "Unfortunately, without the resources of a multibillion-dollar space colony, I won't be able to replicate most of his work for quite some time. However, I was able to find what I believe might be the key to finally inducing artificial Chaos Evolution in ordinary animals! And that key… Is you, Sonic!"

Sonic was startled. "Me? What are you talking about? I'm just a run-of-the-mill hedgehog!"

The Doc shook his head. "No, Sonic, a run-of-the-mill hedgehog is a small spiky creature that roots around in the dirt and eats grubs and berries. YOU, my boy, are a Mobian! A living, breathing, impossible miracle of evolution, something that flies in the face of most of what we scientists think we know about the universe! Mobians are capable of incredible feats, things which we humans are just unable to do on our own. Things that would seem to break the very laws which govern our universe! And I believe the reason for this lies within."

"Within? What are you talking about, Doc?" Sonic asked, looking down himself.

"When the Chaos Emeralds created your species, they infused a spark of raw Chaos energy into each and every single one of you," the Doc explained. "When any Mobian uses their special powers, they are able to tap into that spark, allowing them to accomplish feats which should, quite frankly, be completely and biologically impossible! I believe that if I can harness that spark, I can use it to jumpstart this Chaos Emerald here to trigger an induced artificial Chaos Evolution in any regular animal of my choosing!"

Sonic considered this for a moment. "That's… Pretty damn cool, Doc! So you want to use my spark? Is it safe?"

"It should be," the Doc said. "So long as nothing goes catastrophically wrong, that is… But I've double and triple checked everything, so I'm relatively certain everything should be okay and nobody will get hurt."

"All right," Sonic said, shrugging it off. He wasn't really too concerned about something going wrong. He'd survived enough of the Doc's experiments blowing up in their faces to not be afraid of a little malfunction or mishap. "So, what animal are we gonna test this on?"

"None other than my dear companion Miles, of course!" The Doc said, taking the fox from Sonic.

Sonic frowned. "Miles? Is that really a good idea, Doc?"

The Doc shrugged. "I don't see why not. We've tested him lots of times, and he's always turned out all right in the end."

"Well, yeah, but none of those times we've tried to make him SENTIENT!" Sonic pointed out. "Are you really sure this is something we should be doing? I mean, this is playing God levels here, and that usually doesn't turn out well."

The Doc sighed. "Perhaps not, but… Sonic, I believe you're familiar with the phrase that there are some things men or Mobians are not meant to know?"

"Yeah," Sonic said.

"As any real scientist would tell you, that statement is ludicrous," the Doc said angrily. "It is the job, nay, the DUTY of any respectable scientist to push the boundaries as far as they can and learn everything there is to know about the universe. While I am not as unethical or unscrupulous as to believe that there should not be some restraints in the way we pursue our goals, if we do not try every avenue available to us, how can we truly call ourselves explores of the unknown and seekers of truth? And in any event… Sooner or later, everything is discovered by somebody eventually. That's how science works. After all, I'm not the only scientist working on this problem, Sonic, and even if I turn my back on this research, I promise you that someday, even though it may be many years from now, someone else will eventually figure it out… And they might not be quite as nice about it as us." He smirked as Sonic considered this. "And besides, wouldn't it be nice to have another friend around? Someone to hang out and have adventures with? I for one wouldn't mind having another pair of hands to help out around the lab! Or to…talk to when you aren't around." He sighed. "While I don't regret choosing this path in life, there are times when it can get rather lonely around here…"

"… I guess so," Sonic admitted. "I'm just a bit worried that something like… You know, Frankenstein or whatever might happen? That we'll create some sort of horrible monster that will kill us and try to destroy the world?"

"You've been watching too many horror movies, Sonic," the Doc chided him gently. "That sort of thing NEVER happens in real life!"

…

Everyone pointedly looked at Shadow. He grunted.

"Hold on now… I thought we were learning about SONIC'S origins!" Knuckles spoke up.

"We are," Sonic said.

"Then why is it sounding like we're learning about TAILS' origins?" Knuckles pressed.

Tails smirked. "You're doing that, too. The story's a twofer!"

"Huh. That's awfully convenient," Rouge said.

"AND-CERTAINLY-SAVES-US-SOME-TIME," Omega said.

"But what does transforming Tails from a regular fox into a Mobian have to do with Sonic getting his super speed?" Cream asked. "And… were you REALLY made that way, Tails?"

"I was," Tails confirmed. "But you shouldn't treat me any differently because of it. After all, Shadow was created in the laboratory, but we treat him the same way we treat anyone else! Well, more or less."

Shadow grunted, but looked at the young fox with interest, intrigued that he was not the only artificially created Mobian present. Before, he'd regarded the young Mobian with bemusement, if not grudging respect due to his intellect and technical prowess… But only now was he starting to see him in a new light. He found himself more and more wanting to meet this Doc Blue, a man who more and more was starting to remind him of his own creator.

"What's it like having a human as a dad?" Vector asked, struggling to wrap his head around this.

"What's it like having a Mobian for a dad?" Tails countered. "He's my dad, just like yours is yours. That's all there is to it, really."

"Do you remember being a regular fox?" Rouge asked.

Tails shrugged. "Do you remember being a baby? It was like another life, really. I only recall some vague impressions…but aside from knowing instinctively that Sonic was my friend and Doc Blue was the closest thing to my dad, none of it was really important enough to remember."

"Guess that makes sense…" Knuckles muttered doubtfully.

"But if you were created by a Dr. Blue, why is your last name 'Prower?'" Espio asked.

"Shadow was created by Professor Robotnik, that his last name is 'the Hedgehog,'" Cream pointed out.

"No, it's Robotnik," Shadow said.

"Then why does everyone call you Shadow the Hedgehog, instead of Shadow Robotnik?" The confused Cream asked.

Shadow shrugged. "For the same reason most of us are known by our species instead of our proper surnames, I suppose. Isn't it some sort of Mobian custom? I was never quite clear on that, growing up on the ARK."

"It's something like that, yeah," Rouge said.

"'Prower?'" Espio prompteded.

Tails made a face. "It's one of those overused jokes that ceased being funny years ago. Back when I was just a regular fox, Sonic gave me the last name of 'Prower' as a pun, because I was always able to keep up with him when he ran. I'm still pretty fast, but not as fast as him anymore, but the name stuck anyway, even though on most legal forms I am, indeed, Miles Blue."

"It's still kinda weird…" Charmy said. "I mean, being raised by and MADE by a human? I mean, I guess it happens sometimes, but…"

"My father's a human," Cream spoke up.

Everyone stared at the young rabbit in astonishment. "Wait, he is?!" Amy asked in disbelief.

"Uh-huh," Cream said.

"I thought we were best friends! Why didn't you ever tell me this?!" Amy demanded.

Cream shrugged. "You never asked."

"Who's your father, Cream?" Blaze asked, interested, as Amy fumed.

"Someone all of us know, actually. You see, he's –" Cream started.

"NO!" Knuckles shouted. "No, no, no, NO! We already have TWO backstories going on the same time, we don't need a third! Whoever your dad is, he can wait until it's your turn!"

"As rude as he is, he kind of has a point," Rouge admitted reluctantly as Cream whimpered and cowered. "We do keep getting off track."

"Continue the story, beloved," Blaze said.

"Sure thing!" Said Sonic.

…

"So, what do you need me to do?" Sonic asked.

"Like most hedgehogs, your talent seems to lie in your speed," the Doc said. "Once I have everything set up, I want you to get on that treadmill and run. Run like you've never run before. If you go fast enough, it should cause the spark of Chaos to flare within you, making the Emerald react…"

"And evolving Miles?" Sonic asked.

The Doc nodded. "Precisely!"

Sonic hopped onto the treadmill. "Okay, then. Hook me up, Doc!"

The human scientists spent the next few minutes fussing over Sonic, attaching a series of electrodes connected by wires to the treadmill and to the Chaos Emerald. After he'd checked all the connections several times, he gently placed Miles into the capsule. "Don't worry, Miles," the Doc said to the curious fox as he strapped him into the cushioned seat inside and sealed the capsule. "This will all be over soon, one way or another."

"Want me to start running, Doc?" Sonic asked.

"Not yet! Hold on a minute!" the Doc urged him. The Doc left the room, and a few moments later could be seen through a plate glass window taking up most of one wall, along with various computer banks and instruments. "Just have to run a few diagnostics and systems checks, make sure everything's copacetic…" He murmured, his voice audible through a series of speakers set into the ceiling. "Okay… Everything looks great. You're good to go, Sonic! Start running!"

And run Sonic did. He ran and he ran as fast as he could. He wasn't sure why, but his whole body felt full of energy, something within him pushing him to go faster and faster than he'd ever gone before _. It must be that Chaos Emerald,_ he thought to himself, seeing the gemstone starting to glow with a steady pulse out of the corner of his eye. _If this thing really does have some sort of connection to Mobians, then it only makes sense that being around it would make me stronger than I've ever been before! I feel like I could run forever, and never stop!_

"Good, good…" The Doc murmured, quickly glancing from his running protégé to his various instruments and back. "Everything seems to be working just right…Hmm? What's this?"

As Sonic kept running and running, the dial on one of the Doc's speedometers steadily creeping further and further to the right, the Chaos Emerald's glow grew brighter and brighter. Blue electricity started crackling out from it, lights flashing down the cables leading from its pedestal into the capsule, which began to glow as well, the light obscuring the form of the small fox sealed inside. However, the Emerald's power didn't seem to be simply flowing into the capsule, but the OTHER way as well, into the treadmill and up into Sonic's body. The brown hedgehog's aura, generated just like all Mobians did when they tapped into their inner power to perform incredible feats, started changing color from brown, like it's owner's fur, to blue, like the Emerald…

And slowly, Sonic's fur began to change color as well! "Great Scott… What's happening?" The Doc pressed a button on his console. "Sonic! You're turning blue!"

"Yeah, I noticed!" Sonic replied.

"I'm going to shut this down, this wasn't supposed to happen! I never factored for this!" The Doc said, reaching for the emergency shutoff switch.

"No, don't!" Sonic yelled frantically.

The Doc's hand froze. "Eh?"

"This feels great! Better than I've ever felt before!" Sonic said, voice filled with glee. "I feel like… Like I can run faster, jump higher, do things I could never even IMAGINE before! That Chaos Emerald's doing something to me as well, Doc… And we have to let it happen! I can't explain why, but… Something tells me that this is SUPPOSED to happen!"

The Doc frowned. "I don't like the idea of trusting the outcome of this experiment, let alone your LIFE, to some 'feeling,' Sonic."

"Doc, you said yourself that Mobians and the Chaos Emeralds work on ways that even smart guys like yourselves don't always understand," Sonic pointed out. "You said that we have a connection to them that humans don't… And I can't say why, but I think it's that connection that's telling me that this is the way things have gotta go down! This is what I'm MEANT to do!"

"To be blue?" The Doc asked skeptically.

Sonic grinned. "Nope! Well, yeah, that too… But also, to be the FASTEST THING ALIVE!"

And with that, he put on another burst of speed, his blue aura flaring and more and more of his fur turning blue to match it by the second. Worried, the Doc checked his instruments… And to his astonishment, saw that the speedometer was indicating Sonic was moving not only faster than he'd ever run before, but possibly faster than ANYONE had ever run before! He'd passed 88 mph long time ago, and was steadily climbing up into the hundreds! He wasn't sure if the speedometer would be able to fully measure the speed at which Sonic was running for much longer… He felt a sudden worry that the treadmill might not be able to handle it, either. "I hope you're right, Sonic…" he said worriedly, crossing his fingers.

Oblivious to his mentor's worries, Sonic kept running, faster and faster and faster. He'd always loved running, feeling the wind in his face and the sense of freedom it brought him. But all of his runs before felt like walking in slow motion compared to this! He'd never felt so alive, so powerful, so WHOLE before! He never wanted this incredible feeling to go away, not ever!

Unfortunately, all things came to an end someday, and so too did Sonic's euphoria, as well as the experiment. It ended not with a whimper, nor a bang, but rather a boom. A SONIC boom, rather, as, with a blinding flash of blue light from both Sonic and the Emerald, the newly colored hedgehog broke the sound barrier, as well as the treadmill, and the window in Doc's control room in a shattering explosion of sound, as well as glass, knocking out the scientist.

The Doc came to sometime later. Groaning, he struggled to pull himself up, pieces of broken glass sliding off his form as he got to his feet. There was a loud ringing in his ears, and initially he thought he'd been deafened by the sonic boom, but then he realized it was the alarm from his disasterometer device, which he had set up to monitor trouble of all sorts all over the island to better help emergency and rescue services do their jobs more efficiently. Deciding to table that for later, the Doc peered through the large hole that had once been a window into the experiment chamber…

And gasped when he saw Sonic lying against the wall, slumped down from an imprint shaped like his body, the treadmill a smoking pile of scrap and the glass case containing the Emerald shattered, sparks and jolts of blue electricity still snapping off of it, occasionally. The capsule, thankfully, was still intact, but he only had eyes for his assistant's still form.

"SONIC!" he shouted, racing into the chamber-grabbing a medical scanner and first aid kit as he went––and rushing to the young hedgehog's side, noting with no small sense of relief that he was still breathing.

Sonic groaned and sat up, rubbing his head. "Ouch… Not so loud, Doc, I've got a splitting headache!"

"Considering that you just ran into a concrete wall at faster than the speed of sound, I'm amazed that's ALL you've got!" The Doc said in relief, running the scanner over the blue hedgehog. "I don't believe it… Everything's green! Aside from a bit of cranial bruising, you've got a clean bill of health! In fact, I think you're healthier than you've ever been before!"

"Chalk that up to the power of Chaos, I guess," Sonic said. "And did you just say I ran faster than SOUND?! That's AWESOME!"

"I know, right?!" The Doc said giddily. "And that's not even what we were trying to do! Err… Your mother won't be too angry at me for this, will she?"

"Nah, she's always said blue was more my color anyway," Sonic said, admiring his new fur color. "Amazing… Doc, even though I'm not hooked up to the Emerald anymore, I can still feel some of its power… I think whatever we just did strengthened that spark of Chaos inside of me for good!"

"Yes, that would seem to conform to my initial scans…" The Doc mused. "Assuming this is permanent, that means that, aside from your new color change, you may be able to achieve such incredible speeds whenever you wish! Astonishing! This requires more tests!"

"If it means I get to run like that again, I'm all for it," Sonic said. He frowned and looked down at his feet. "Huh. My shoes are okay. I'm kind of surprised, I figured they'd have gotten shredded by me running so fast. I'm pretty sure they weren't meant to be worn by someone moving at supersonic speeds."

"It's probably due to an aftereffect of your enhanced bioelectrical Chaos field encapsulating your shoes due to their close contact with your skin to offer them the same protection that allows your own body to move at supersonic speeds without tearing your skin off or shattering your bones," the Doc said.

"Really?" Sonic asked.

"I have no idea, I made that up just now," the Doc admitted. "It's as good an explanation as anything else, but we're going to need to run more tests to be sure! Lots and lots of tests!"

"Sounds cool," Sonic said. He frowned. "Speaking of tests… Why do I feel like we're forgetting something?"

They both frowned and considered this for a moment. Their eyes lit up, gasping at the same time. "MILES!" They shouted in unison.

They raced over to the capsule, which had somehow not been damaged in the explosion, Sonic moving much faster than the Doc even at a walking pace, something he noted with delight. After a few moments of desperate fumbling, they managed to lever the capsule open, and inside found…

A perfectly normal, healthy looking young Fox. A MOBIAN Fox.

"It worked… IT WORKED!" the Doc shouted. "IT WORKED! IT WORKED! THE EXPERIMENT WAS A SUCCESS! HAHAHAHA! OH, GRANDFATHER, YOU BRILLIANT MAN! I COULDN'T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU! WE'VE JUST MADE HISTORY! THIS MAY BE THE GREATEST SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH IN CENTURIES, IF NOT _MILLENNIA!_ "

"Uh, Doc… Why's he got two tails?" Sonic asked in concern.

"Eh?" The Doc paused in his revelry and self-congratulation to take a second look at the transformed Miles. His brow furrowed in puzzlement when he noticed that the newborn Mobian did, indeed, have two tails. "That's… Unusual…"

"Weren't expecting this, either, huh?" Sonic asked.

The Doc shook his head. "Not at all." He chuckled ruefully. "Well, I suppose I should have known better than to expect something called CHAOS energy to conform completely to my expectations. We're going to have to run some tests on him, too. Most fascinating… If he obtained this unique mutation just as you obtained yours, there may be a connection between the two of you… Maybe some sort of special destiny?"

"Didn't think you believed in that sort of thing, Doc," Sonic commented.

"I think I might be starting to," the scientist said.

"So, think we could turn that alarm off now? It's starting to get on my nerves a bit," Sonic said.

"Oh, we can't shut off, that's the alert for the disasterometer. That means there must be something bad going on somewhere on the island," the Doc said.

"Oh, okay," Sonic said.

There was a moment's pause as this sunk in. "Should, uh, should we check it out?" Sonic asked.

"That would probably be a good idea," the Doc agreed, gently lifting the transformed, but still unconscious Miles out of the capsule.

They headed into another room, where the Doc again gently lowered Miles into a seat before fiddling with some controls at the base of a giant mass of monitors, all of which seemed to be showing what looked like an invasion of robots attacking towns and cities all over the island. "What movie is this, Doc?" Sonic asked. "Doesn't look like anything familiar to me."

"I… I'm not sure this IS a movie, Sonic," the Doc said in alarm. "I think the island actually IS being attacked by an army of robots!"

"Huh. Cool," Sonic said.

"No, not cool!" the Doc snapped. "People could get hurt!"

Sonic frowned at this, realizing how serious this was. "Well… who's behind this? They're robots, right? That means somebody must've built them!"

The Doc nodded. "A good question, Sonic. Let's see… Something about the design of those robots seems familiar… I know I've seen them before… They definitely aren't military, and they don't match most of the models currently on the market–" He froze. "No… No, it can't be… Not HIM…"

"Doc?" Sonic asked in concern.

"There's only one other man who… But no, it can't be him, not after all these years… Can it?" The Doc muttered to himself, looking more and more worried.

Suddenly, the images on all the monitors cut out and were replaced by the visage of a rather rotund bald man in a red and yellow shirt and black pants, dark blue glasses, and a very impressive brown mustache. "Greetings, citizens of South island!" The very round man said with an evil grin. "I am Dr. Ivo Robotnik, your new Lord and master! Rejoice, for I have come to liberate you from the shackles of free will to live a life of rewarding servitude under my new Empire! If you surrender, submit to my rule, and serve me faithfully, you shall be allowed to keep your lives. And if you dare to oppose me… Well, let's just say you won't regret it for very long." He laughed maniacally before the feed changed again to a logo that looked like a stylized image of the madman's face.

"Whoa! What the heck was that?!" Sonic asked.

"No, no, no… Not HIM! After all these years, I thought he was gone for good!" The Doc moaned.

"You know that nutjob, Doc?" Sonic asked.

The Doc nodded regretfully. "Unfortunately, yes. That's Dr. Ivo Robotnik, an old colleague and childhood friend of mine. We knew each other growing up… Went to school together… In fact, he had a grandfather who worked on the ARK as well! We had big dreams, and wanted to change the world…"

"Certainly looks like he's trying to do that to me," Sonic pointed out.

"We never wanted to change the world like THIS! At least, I didn't…" The Doc said mournfully. "He was a brilliant roboticist whose innovations revolutionized the field. In fact, a good number of the advances in modern robotics were either pioneered by or inspired by him! However, one day he went too far… He proposed the use of live wild animals as a power source for his machines to save fuel costs!"

"What?!" Sonic cried, glancing in alarm at the still asleep Miles, who not too long ago had been one of those very same animals. "That's horrible!"

"Not to mention needlessly cruel and ridiculously inefficient. There are far more viable and environmentally friendly energy sources than live animals!" The Doc said, shaking his head. "I told him again and again, 'Ivo, you can't use live animals as a power source for your robots, it's not just unethical but extremely impractical!' But he would never listen. He became a laughingstock in the scientific community for his insane theories and his bizarre obsession with naming his creations 'Egg' something or other, and PETA vigorously campaigned against him. Eventually, he retreated from the public eye, vowing revenge against 'all those small-minded fools who could not see his brilliant vision.' But scientists say that sort of thing all the time, so nobody really thought much of it." He scratched his head. "Apparently, we should have."

"What do we do, Doc?" Sonic asked.

"I've already sent out a distress beacon, so the military should arrive to help shortly," the Doc said. "However… I'm not certain they'll be capable of fighting those robots. As odd and somewhat goofy- looking as they appear, if I know Ivo as well as I used to, he'll have made them stronger than just about any soldier or military mech currently available…" He frowned, looking worried. "And even when they show up…it might not be in time…after all, if he can power his robots using regular animals, what's to stop him from trying the same thing with PEOPLE?"

"Then… What are we gonna do, Doc?" Sonic asked, horrified by this mental image.

"I'm… Not sure," the Doc admitted. "I'm not positive there's anything more we CAN do."

"… What about me?" Sonic asked.

The Doc frowned and regarded the newly colored hedgehog in confusion. "What do you mean, what about you?"

"I'm fast now, Doc. REALLY fast. I'm pretty sure all my stats have been boosted exponentially. Maybe… Maybe I can do something?" Sonic suggested. "Maybe I can fight the robots and save the island?"

"Absolutely not!" The Doc cried, aghast. "It's far too dangerous!"

"I hang out with you," Sonic pointed out. "There's a lot of people who'd say THAT'S dangerous."

"… True," the Doc said grudgingly. "But there's a world of difference between helping me with incredibly dangerous and volatile experiments and going out to fight a robot invasion single-handedly!"

"Doc, if my dad's stories are anything to go by, members of my family have been fighting tyrants and despots and warlords and BEATING them single-handedly for centuries!" Sonic protested. "Heck, if it weren't for my dad, I'm pretty sure South Island wouldn't even be the nice place to live on it is now!"

"And how many of these legendary hedgehog heroes saved the day when they were at your age?" The Doc asked skeptically.

"Most of them, actually," Sonic said. "They tend to start out pretty young in my family."

"… Oh," the Doc said, nonplussed. "Well… Still… That doesn't mean it's all right for YOU to do it! It's too dangerous, you might get hurt!"

"Doc, in case you forgot, I ran into a concrete wall at faster than the speed of sound, and SURVIVED!" Sonic pointed out. "I'm pretty sure I can take a hit!"

…

"Then why is it that if you so much as TOUCH an enemy or hazardous obstacle, you lose rings and a second hit would kill you if you don't have any left?" Rouge asked skeptically.

"Because all of those things are made from special materials that can pierce the bioelectrical skintight Chaos field that protects Sonic from the more dangerous aftereffect of his own abilities," Tails said.

Rouge blinked. "Really?"

Tails shrugged. "I dunno. It's as good an explanation as anything else."

"I guess it explains why that sort of thing applies to all of us, too," Shadow said uncertainly. "Even me. For some reason. Assuming this explanation is legit, anyway."

"THEN-WHY-AM-I-AFFECTED? I-AM-NOT-A-SQUISHY-MEATBAG. I-DO-NOT-GENERATE-A-BIOLECTRIC-CHAOS-FIELD. IN-FACT, I'M-MADE-OF-METAL! I-SHOULD-BE-MORE-DURABLE-THAN-ALL-OF-YOU-PUT-TOGETHER! I-SHOULDN'T-EVEN- _NEED_ -RINGS! WHY-CAN-I-ONLY-TAKE-TWO-HITS-BEFORE-DYING?"

"A riddle for the ages, I suppose," Espio said.

"…Yeah, no, I'm not sure I buy that," Vector said skeptically. "There's a lot of holes in that theory, Tails. Like for instance, how, that 'one-hit kill' thing applies for us sometimes, but not others? Because I could swear that we've been on lots of adventures where that isn't the case…"

Espio nodded in agreement. "Like how sometimes, when we fight each other, one of us can only sustain one hit with rings, while the other takes multiple hits to defeat. Or other times when we can just keep beating each other up without bothering with rings or losing lives. How do you explain that?"

Tails shrugged. "There's any number of possible explanations, really. Fluctuations in the global geomagnetic Chaos energy field? A unique interaction between our personal bioelectric Chaos fields triggered when we clash against each other? Radiation generated by whatever powers Eggman's robots? Some weird energy that only exists in some Zones, but not others? Really, there's still a lot we don't know about how our world works. A scientist could spend his or her entire life searching for answers, but still barely get past the surface. All the more reason for us to keep searching for the truth, though, so future generations can gain a better understanding of the universe we live in. That's what science is all about."

"And here I thought science involved building robot armies, airship armadas, and weapons of mass destruction," Rouge joked.

"That too," Tails admitted.

"Have they figured out the answers to any of this in your time, Silver?" Blaze asked.

"They have," the time-traveler admitted. "But I can't tell them to you because, you know, spoilers. That and I don't really understand all the science behind it myself…"

"Did that convince the Doc, Sonic?" Cream asked, trying to get things back on track.

"Well…" Sonic continued.

…

"Well…yes, I suppose that's true, but…but! Even so…even so, Sonic, I cannot in good conscience let you go and risk yourself like this," the Doc said.

"All of life's a risk, Doc," Sonic said. "And besides…I told you I felt like this change was something that was always MEANT to happen. Maybe this is why. So I can be the hero South Island needs!"

"Sonic…" the Doc whispered, looking pained.

"Doc," Sonic said softly. "If I don't go do something, then who will?"

The Doc bit his lip for a moment, looking uncertain. Finally, he sighed and said, "Go ask your mother for permission."

"Sweet!" Sonic said, knowing he'd won, for both of them already knew what Bernadette would say. In a blue flash, he ran off, returning seconds later. "She says its fine, so long as I'm back in time for dinner!" He frowned, a worried look, crossing his face. "Do you think I'll make it back in time?"

"With your speed? I don't doubt it," the Doc said. Now that he'd resigned himself to his young assistant putting himself in harm's way, his mind raced, trying to figure out everything he could do to make this feasible. "All right, if we're going to do this, we're going to do it right. For obvious reasons, I can't join you in the field, plus somebody needs to stay here to monitor Miles. I imagine he'll be incredibly disoriented when he wakes up, given that he went from being a perfectly average Fox to a sentient and self-aware Mobian in seconds. He's going to need guidance to help him understand what's happened to him."

"And what to do with that second tail of his?" Sonic asked.

"Quite. Gotta figure out what that's all about…" The Doc murmured. "Anyway, that doesn't mean I won't be helping you in any way I can. Here, take this."

He handed a small earbud to Sonic. "What's this thing, some kind of communicator?" The hedgehog intuited.

The Doc nodded. "Precisely. Once I've regained control of the security feeds – – it shouldn't take more than a moment, Robotnik's code has always been easy to hack – – I should be able to monitor everything that's going on around the island, direct you where needed, and provide you with guidance on how to fight whatever robots or death machines you run into along the way."

"So you're going to be my mission control? Cool!" Sonic said, sticking the device in his ear. "Just try not to be too obvious or obnoxious about it, I hate it when the 'helper' character in videogames is too annoying."

The Doc shuddered. "Don't we all? Whoever designed that horrible Omochao atrocity should be shot… Anyway, I'll do my best not to be as bad as all that."

Sonic grinned and gave his mentor a thumb's up. "Don't sweat it, Doc, I trust you! I know you'll pull through!"

The Doc smiled ruefully. "Let's hope your faith in me will be rewarded. Just give me a moment…" He turned back to his console and spent a couple of minutes typing, tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration. With a final keystroke and a cry of exultation, the ugly logo filling all the monitors vanished and was replaced by maps of the island and footage of robots wreaking havoc and attacking or capturing people. "Aha! Same old Robotnik, as shoddy at coding as ever! Okay, let's see here… Oho, now THAT'S interesting!"

"What is?" Sonic asked.

"If these readings are correct… I believe all six of the other Chaos Emeralds are on this island!" The Doc said.

"What?! No way!" Sonic protested in disbelief. "How come we didn't know about that before now?!"

"It might be a recent development," the Doc mused. "The Chaos Emeralds have a habit of not staying in one place for very long, and where one is found, the others usually appear shortly afterwards. It's possible that our experiment with the blue Chaos Emerald somehow attracted or caused the other Emeralds to appear here on the island… Perhaps that might even be why Robotnik is attacking this place, out of all the other places in the world! The fact that the highest concentration of robot attacks seems to be clustered around where I'm picking up the energy signatures of the other Chaos Emeralds would seem to indicate that, or at the very least, that he's become as aware of their presence here as we have."

"We can't let him get the other six!" Sonic said. "If just ONE was enough to do this to me and make Miles a Mobian, what would he do if he had six, if not ALL of them?!"

"I shudder at the very thought," the Doc said. "You're right, Sonic! We must not let him obtain those Emeralds! Let's see here… The closest one seems to be in Green Hill Zone!"

"Green Hill? I go there all the time to run!" Sonic said.

"Well, this time you're going there with a far greater purpose," the Doc said resolutely. "Go, Sonic! Retrieve that Emerald, stop Robotnik, and save our island!"

Sonic nodded. "You can count on me!" He turned and ran off in a blue flash.

"Godspeed, Sonic the Hedgehog," the Doc said solemnly, unaware that behind him, Miles had slowly begun to come to, cracked his eyes open… And saw Sonic departing, the afterimage of the blue blur imprinting itself on his young, newly formed mind, and unknowingly shaping his future forever.

…

"Everything that happened after that is pretty much common knowledge," Sonic said to his enraptured audience. "I fought and defeated Robotnik for the first time, kicking him off South Island and proving myself as a hero. And the next time he reared his ugly bald head, I was there to stop him… But I wasn't alone, isn't that right, Tails?"

Tails shook his head. "Nope! By that time, I'd become smart enough to understand what was going on around me.… And I knew that I didn't want to let my best friend and big brother figure go off to fight the bad guys on his own! It wasn't easy to convince Dad to let me go, but by that point he'd pretty much resigned himself to the knowledge that there was no way whatsoever he could keep us out of danger."

"He even gave us a biplane to get around in!" Sonic sighed. "I miss the original Tornado…"

"The newer model's much better," Tails pointed out.

"Yeah, but you never really forget your first one," Sonic said wistfully. "So anyway, that's the story of how I got my speed!"

"And how I was born!" Tails added.

Amy applauded enthusiastically. "That was great! Well done! A wonderful story, Sonic! I didn't really care so much about all that stuff involving Tails, but you told, which automatically makes it perfect!"

"It was rather informative and intriguing," Shadow admitted.

"And here I thought you were an orphan that got picked on for having two tails and got adopted by Sonic or something," Rouge said.

"And wasn't there something about a bird armada or a witch in a cart?" Vector recalled vaguely.

Tails smirked. "Well, I HAVE had a couple of adventures on my own when Sonic was busy doing something else… Just because I'm his sidekick doesn't mean I can't have life of my own, you know!"

"It doesn't?" Charmy asked. Espio smacked him.

"There's one thing I don't understand, though," Cream said. "If your Daddy found a way to artificially induce evolution in animals, why aren't there lots and lots of new Mobians like Tails wandering around?"

"Just because Dad's found a way to artificially evolve animals that WORKS, that doesn't mean it's cost-efficient," Tails said. "It still requires a Chaos Emerald, a Mobian with a strong enough spark of raw Chaos inside of them, and certain other materials that aren't exactly easy to come by. He was able to evolve Sonic's dog Muttski and a few others before he had to give up his Chaos Emerald, and now he's trying to figure out an easier way, using Chaos Drives or other power sources. It's slow going, but he'll get there someday."

"He certainly will," Silver said. "I think I can reveal that much without spoiling."

"Wait, you evolved your DOG?!" Knuckles said incredulously.

Sonic nodded. "Seemed like a good idea the time. Since Tails evolved, the Doc couldn't exactly use him as a dumb lab animal anymore. Plus, now I have a little brother to keep Mom and Dad company when I'm out saving the world!"

Shadow raised an eyebrow. "You consider your former pet your little brother now?"

"Well, what else would he be?" Sonic asked with a shrug.

"Speaking of your family, beloved, when exactly are you going to introduce me to them?" Blaze asked.

Sonic blushed. "Well, uh, it'll… Happen eventually…"

"Didn't you promise them you'd bring her over for dinner the next time she was in our dimension?" Tails quipped.

"Shut up!" Sonic hissed.

"Be thankful I'm not telling them your REAL name as well," Tails replied, causing Sonic to go white with terror.

"I would be honored to come to dinner at your family home," Blaze said with a warm smile. "I'm looking forward to meeting them. And no doubt hearing all the embarrassing stories about your childhood your mother will no doubt eager to share with me."

"Yeah, that'll be great," Sonic said weakly as the others snickered. "Way to go, buddy," he growled at Tails.

"You're welcome," Tails said smugly.

"Why hasn't he ever invited _me_ over to meet his parents?!" Amy demanded.

"BECAUSE-HE-DOES-NOT-LIKE-YOU. NOR-DOES-ANYONE-ELSE," Omega said.

"I like her," Cream said.

"YOU-LIKE-EVERYONE," Omega pointed out.

"True," Cream conceded.

"Sonic, thank you for that story. It answered a lot of questions… Including pretty much all of the ones I was going to ask Tails," Silver said.

"Welp, guess that means I'm off the hook," Tails said cheerfully. The others glowered at him.

"Indeed," Silver agreed. "Which means it's time for us to move on to… Amy!"

Amy gasped "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh! This is GREAT!"

"This is terrible," Sonic groaned. Blaze nodded sympathetically.

"It must be destiny that I'm going right after you, Sonic! Now I'll be able to prove once and for all why I'm the girl for you and that skank isn't!" Amy said, leering at Blaze.

The royal cat's claw clenched into a fist. "Beloved, are you SURE…"

"Getting less and less sure by the moment," Sonic grumbled.

"All right!" Amy said, clasping her hands together, stars in her eyes. "Ask me anything, Silver! I'm ready!"

"All right," Silver said. "Amy, **how did you fall in love with Sonic?** "

…

And that's a wrap! Wow, that story took longer to tell than I thought it would, but then again, because it was technically two origins for the price of one, I suppose it's to be expected. Hopefully, most of the future ones will be shorter, but given some of my other work, I can give no guarantees on this.

So, Amy's origin will be next chapter. Who do you think should go after her? **Knuckles, Rouge, Cream, Big, or the Chaotix?** (Or Blaze, if you don't want her to be last.)

Also, if anyone wants to see or has suggestions for origins for Silver or other Sonic characters, I'm all ears.


	3. Amy's Fortune

Welcome back! I'm glad to see you're all still enjoying the story, just as I'm still enjoying writing it. This origin should be (slightly) shorter than the last one, but hopefully still as enjoyable. Read on!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.

…

"How did Amy fall in love with me?" Sonic asked. "Well, that's an easy one; she fell in love with me after I saved her on Little Planet!"

"Actually, Sonic," Amy corrected. "I was in love with you WAY before that!"

Sonic blinked in surprise. "…Really? Well, uh, I was not aware of that."

"Were you one of Sonic's rabid and insane fangirls, then?" Shadow asked. "I'd imagine even back then he must've had a lot of them… For reasons which continue to elude me."

"You're one to talk, Shads," Sonic pointed out. "Have you ever MET your fanbase?"

Shadow shuddered. "Unfortunately, I have."

"Pshh, those wannabes?" Amy said dismissively. "I was in love with Sonic for YEARS before he became a mainstream hero!"

Sonic's eyes widened. "… I suddenly find myself even more terrified of you than I usually am, Amy."

"Yes, hipsters are rather terrifying," Vector agreed cluelessly.

"What, were you stalking him even before he got his powers or something?" Knuckles asked in disgust.

"No! Little Planet is the first time I met him face-to-face… But I was in love with him for a long, long time before then," Amy said dreamily. "I'd known for years, even before he got his powers and became the greatest hero our world has ever known, that he would be the hedgehog that I would one day marry!"

"I think you can't get any more disturbing, and then you say something like that," said the horrified Sonic.

"Don't worry, beloved, I'll protect you from her," Blaze promised soothingly, hugging the trembling hedgehog.

"It's YOU he should need protecting from, not me!" Amy snarled.

"How is that possible, Amy?" Cream asked.

"How is what possible?" Amy asked.

"How could you have fallen in love with Sonic before he became a hero?" Cream asked.

Amy grinned. "I'm happy you asked, Cream! Listen up, all of you, as I tell you a story of true love and romance! One which will inspire all to seek out their heart's desire… And hopefully convince others to butt out because they're not wanted!" She snarled at Blaze. The cat folded her arms and glared at the pink hedgehog. "It all began many, many years ago, when I was just a little girl, attending the fair with my mother…"

The air began to shimmer and waver, courtesy of Silver's device. Thankfully, Omega refrained from making any strange and annoying sounds this time.

…

Amy Rose, age seven, took in the sights around her in awe. There were so many bright lights, and loud noises, and screams and laughter, and obviously rigged games, and massively unhealthy snacks, and dangerously unsafe rides barely held together by rust and duct tape, and heavily sweating people wearing grotesque-nightmare inducing mascot costumes desperately reconsidering their choices in life! This was the young hedgehog's first time at the fair, and it was unlike anything she'd ever experienced before. It was the most wonderful thing she'd ever seen!

"Mommy, mommy, mommy, I want to go on that ride! No, on that ride! No, wait, I want to play that game! No, that one! Take a picture of me with that crying man dressed up like a marmoset! Win me that impractically huge stuffed animal three times as big as I am! I want a goldfish! I want cotton candy! I WANT EVERYTHING!" She shrieked at the top of her lungs, darting here and there, so excited she felt like she was about to burst.

…

"Geez, Amy, and I thought you were annoying NOW," Sonic muttered. "What, did you mellow with age or something?" Blaze barely hid a chuckle.

"Hey! It was my first time at the fair!" Amy said indignantly. "My younger self was just overwhelmed by all that stimulation and sugar, that's all!"

"To be fair, Sonic, I think most kids are like that their first time at a fair," Tails said.

Vector nodded in agreement. "Yeah, the first time we took Charmy to one—well, other than Carnival Island, that is-we felt like killing ourselves."

"Or him," Espio said flatly.

"Hey!" Charmy said.

"I didn't act like that at all the first time I went to the fair," Cream said, appalled.

"That's because you're such a pure, sweet girl it's almost disgusting," Rouge said with a smile.

"Oh," Cream said.

"WHAT-KIND-OF-ROBOTS-DID-YOU-KILL? HOW-DID-THEY-COMPARE-TO-THE-ONES-IN-CARNIVALS-TODAY?" Omega asked.

"There weren't any robots, and I certainly didn't kill anything," Amy said, looking confused.

"THERE-WEREN'T? STRANGE. WHENEVER-I-GO-TO-A-CARNIVAL, I-OFTEN-KILL-LOTS-OF-ROBOTS," said the perplexed Omega.

"That would be because most of the carnivals we frequent are controlled by Eggman," Shadow asked. He frowned in thought. "For that matter, why DOES Eggman make so many carnivals?"

"For the same reason he makes so many casinos, I suppose," Rouge said. "To help him make the money he needs to pay for his next big world domination scheme. Well, that or he's a gambling addict."

Shadow's eyes lit up in realization. "So THAT'S why he built that giant robot slot machine…"

"This wasn't an Eggman carnival, it was a perfectly ordinary run-of-the-mill carnival," Amy asserted. "In fact, this was before Eggman had even started the world domination business!" She looked thoughtful. "Funny…It's almost impossible to imagine a world where he WASN'T running around, invading with robot armies or stupidly unleashing ancient evils all over the place. We've been at this a long time, haven't we?"

Sonic nodded. "Yeah… Wait, how long HAS it been, anyway?"

Everyone paused, looking uncertain.

…

"Don't worry, Amy, we'll do everything you want," Amy's mother, a violet hedgehog with rather long, dark purple quills and somewhat bloodshot eyes said with a wince, blinking several times and shielding her eyes from the sun. "Can you just… Turn it down a little, please? Mommy's still feeling a little sick, and while there are lots of kids running around puking their guts out around here, I don't really feel inclined to join them."

"You're ALWAYS feeling a little sick," Amy complained. "Maybe you should stop taking that 'special mommy juice' so much. Especially since you always start crying and yelling and saying bad words whenever you have too much of it."

Amy's mother sighed. "You're probably right, Amy, but right now, my 'mommy juice' is probably the only thing keeping me from breaking down completely now that your deadbeat father's run off with that bitch Fiona, leaving me to raise a kid and pay off all his debts while stuck in a miserable dead-end job. Kiddo, a word of advice to you: stay away from men completely. Or, if you absolutely HAVE to have a man, never, ever, EVER let him go."

…

Sonic stared at Amy, disturbed and a little sympathetic. "Suddenly, so much about you makes a lot more sense."

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?!" Amy demanded.

"What's mommy juice? My mommy never drinks anything like that," Cream asked.

"Trust me, you're better off not knowing, kid," Rouge said.

…

"But seriously, I think I'm turned off to men entirely after that pig," Amy's mother said with a shudder. "Pigs too, for that matter. Yes, I suppose that's somewhat racist, but right now I'm not really in a mood to care."

"What about women?" Amy asked innocently.

Amy's mother laughed harshly. "Amy, kiddo, I'm as liberal as the next hedgehog, but that doesn't mean I'm interested…in…women…" She trailed off, staring in awe at an unimaginably beautiful red and pink-scaled cobra snake charmer and belly dancer covered in iridescent jewels, pearls, and elegantly sewn veils putting on a performance nearby.

…

"Wait, they had belly dancers at a fair? For CHILDREN?!" Sonic asked in disbelief.

"I've never been to any fairs with belly dancers," Cream said. "For that matter, I'm not sure I know what a belly dancer is."

"That's probably for the best," Tails said.

"It was a pretty unusual and mature fair," Amy admitted.

"Sounds like my kind of shindig," Rouge said, aroused.

"Why, because there's lots of people with jewels for you to steal?" Knuckles asked obliviously.

Rouge facepalmed. "Yes, Knuckles, that's exactly why I'd want to go to a fair like that. To steal jewels. Well done." Knuckles smiled, looking rather proud of himself.

"Hey, uh, I don't suppose you could tell us when this fair might next be in town…?" Vector asked hopefully.

"Unfortunately, it got shut down for good the day after I visited," Amy said.

"Too many high-minded moral guardians complaining about their children getting corrupted?" Espio asked.

"No, the Ferris wheel derailed and killed hundreds of people. Also, there was some food poisoning and I think there was a sexual predator/serial killer hiding in the house of mirrors or something," Amy said.

"…Huh…" Sonic said after a long silence.

"I guess it just goes to show you that Eggman carnivals aren't the only incredibly dangerous ones around," Tails commented.

"Should we…do something about that?" Cream asked, unnerved and wondering if she would ever be able to properly enjoy the fair again.

"Not our jurisdiction," Shadow said apathetically.

"NOT-IF-EGGMAN-IS-NOT-INVOLVED, ANYWAY," Omega said. "FOR-SOME-REASON, PEOPLE-ALWAYS-GET-UPSET-WHEN-I-BURN-DOWN-THEIR-FACILITIES-BUT-NOBODY-CARES-IF-I-DO-IT-TO-EGGMAN'S. WHY-CAN'T-THEY-MAKE-UP-THEIR-MINDS-ALREADY?"

…

"Wow, she's pretty!" Amy commented. "Everyone else must think so, too, considering how much money they're throwing at her!"

"Uh, yeah," Amy's mother yelped, sweating and feeling a strange warmth rushing through her as the gorgeous serpent caught her eye, winked, and mouthed something she'd have to be blind not to interpret. A desperate desire filled her…

But wait, what about Amy? She was aware she wasn't exactly the best parent, but there was no way she would be so bad as to abandon her daughter because of a magnificent, luscious, scaly…

Ahem!

Something caught her eye, and suddenly she realized a solution to her little dilemma. (In retrospect, she would realize that it was actually a rather terrible solution, but in all fairness, she was still recovering from a bad breakup, nursing a hangover and currently surging with hormones, so she can be given a little leeway in this instance. Or not. Depends on how you feel, I guess.) "Amy, sweetie, do you want to get your fortune told?"

"Would I!" Amy said enthusiastically.

"Great! There's a tent right over there. Here, take a 20, that should be enough," Amy's mother said, handing her daughter some Rings.

"Huh? You aren't coming with me?" Amy asked in surprise.

Amy's mother shook her head. "Oh, no, I couldn't. This is YOUR fortune, not mine! Plus, I have a morbid fear of fortunetellers. You know, like how some people are afraid of spiders or clowns or whatnot."

"Oh, I see," Amy said. "But what will you do, then?"

"I want to, uh, talk to the very pretty lady over there," Amy's mother said, struggling to take her eyes off the serpent so she could look at her daughter. "Don't worry; I'll be right here by the time you're finished." _Assuming that fortuneteller takes her time, which she'd better, with that much cash!_

Amy shrugged. "Okay. Have fun, mommy!" She said, waving as she headed for the tent.

"You too, sweetie," Amy's mother said absentmindedly as the crowd around the snake dispersed, the show finished… And the cobra beckoned enticingly, her long forked tongue flitting out to lick her lips. The hedgehog grinned lasciviously. "I have a feeling _I_ sure will."

…

"I have no idea what she's doing, but it sounds horribly irresponsible," Cream said sternly.

"Yeah, Amy, no offense, but your mom sounds kinda lousy," Knuckles said. "Granted, I've never had a mother myself, so I have no idea whether or not that sort of behavior is acceptable or not. But still."

"No, you're right; it _was_ rather irresponsible of her…" Amy admitted. "But given that it led me to fall in love with Sonic, as well as get a second mother, I think I can forgive her."

There was a pause. "Wait, _what_?!" Shadow asked.

"Yeah, Mom and the cobra—Hood-got married," Amy said. "She was really good for my mom, and our lives improved a lot afterwards! But that's a story for another time. Here's what happened when I entered that tent, and met my destiny…"

…

"Welcome, welcome, dear child!" A lilting voice called out as Amy entered the tent, its dark interior a stark contrast from the bright daylight outside. Amy had to blink a few times as her eyesight adjusted to the dim interior of the tent, though the cloying incense rising from the many scented candles littering the chamber might have helped in that. There were all sorts of mystic symbols, sigils, artifacts, and gewgaws littering the walls and hanging from the ceiling, most prominent of which was a huge stuffed alligator. Beads and crystals dangled from the ceiling, and Amy could've sworn she saw strange figures moving in their faceted depths. Some of them seemed to be looking back. In the center of the room was a round table covered in a silk cloth with all the figures of the Tarot sewn into it, a crystal ball held in a frame that looked like bone on top. Behind the table was an exotically beautiful moth wearing a turban, her face partially covered by a veil, numerous charms and jewels hanging off her small frame, the colorful iridescent scales on her wings glittering and constantly shifting in hypnotic, enticing patterns. "Welcome to the Tent of Mystery! I am Gypsy the Moth, an oracle and seer of great renown, and for a small, paltry sum, the secrets of your future can be revealed!"

"What can I get for 20 Rings?" Amy asked, slapping down the Rings her mother had given her onto the table.

"More than enough," the moth said, quickly grabbing the Rings and stowing them in one of her voluminous sleeves. "Now, let us see what my crystal ball can tell us, hmmm?"

The seer started waving her hands in the air over the crystal ball, murmuring something under her breath. The scales on her wings continued shifting and changing, their patterns transforming into a series of eerie looking glowing runes that Amy, even as untrained, young, and inexperienced as she was, instantly recognized as symbols of great power. A gust of wind began circling through the tent, causing the various dangling relics and trinkets to start swaying and knocking against each other, the noise they made sounding almost like the chattering of teeth. Amy found herself shivering, goosebumps rising from her flesh… And when she started seeing her own breath, realized it wasn't just an otherworldly dread, the tent was actually getting colder! (And no, not from some fan or AC. Genuine magic was involved.)

The crystal ball glowed, and both Amy and Gypsy leaned forward to look into it. Figures started appearing inside it, and Amy was shocked to realize one of them was her! An older and taller her, wearing a red dress and holding a rather large hammer, but still noticeably her! "That's me!" She cried.

"Indeed it is," Gypsy said. "Let's see…"

She waved her hands over the ball, and the future Amy shrank, the 'camera' receding, and numerous demonic-looking silhouettes with red eyes and crooked smiles-most prominent of which was a rotund, egg shaped figure with a rather large mustache-appeared, looming in the background. "In the years to come, our world will be beset by many, any evils, all of which seek to conquer or destroy us all. However, each and every time they rise up, a great hero shall stand up to oppose them."

"Me?!" Amy asked excitedly.

"Actually, no, it's that guy," Gypsy said, the view in the crystal ball shifting a bit, pushing future Amy to the side and focusing on a blue hedgehog with long spiky quills staring defiantly into the darkness, a confident smirk on his face.

"Oh!" Amy gasped, not minding so much that she was apparently not going to be a great hero of legend upon seeing the new figure. "He's so handsome!"

"He is, isn't he?" Gypsy agreed. "A real catch and a total hunk, with a perfect body and eyes and hair. Any girl would be lucky to have him."

…

"Okay, there's no way she said that!" Sonic said.

"She totally did! Honest!" Amy said.

"Uh-huh. Sure," the blue hedgehog said, not believing her.

"I don't believe you!" Knuckles yelled. And if KNUCKLES, one of the most gullible people on the planet, didn't believe you, that was really saying something.

Amy scowled.

…

"Whenever our world is threatened with destruction, he shall be there to save it…the Blue Blur, the Speed Demon, the Iblis Trigger, the Knight of the Wind, the Once and Future King, the Legendary Blue Hedgehog, the Fastest Thing Alive…Sonic the Hedgehog!" Gypsy said dramatically as the blue hedgehog in the crystal ball sped into action, moving so quickly he was only visible as a blue streak, piercing the dark figures again and again, causing them to howl and writhe in agony.

"And I'll be right there, fighting by his side all the while!" Amy said as her future self leaped into action as well, pink light glowing around her as she lashed out with her hammer again and again.

"Ehhh…" Gypsy waved her hand noncommittally. "Well, that might be overstating it a bit. Most of the time, he'll have others fighting by his side. Much more closely, in fact," the moth said as a red echidna and a yellow fox appeared next to the blue hedgehog, fighting valiantly beside him. "I mean, yeah, you'll be fighting too sometimes, but most of the time you'll just be…there."

"Just…there?" Amy asked in disbelief.

Gypsy shrugged. "Yeah. Pretty much. I mean, yes, you WILL fight evil, quite often in somewhat close proximity to Sonic, but you won't usually be fighting ALONGSIDE him, per se."

Amy frowned. "What, do I get kidnapped a lot or something?"

"Not that much, actually," the moth admitted. "Maybe a couple of times, but not that often, really. Most of the time you'll just be…there. Tagging along. Being a spectator. That sort of thing."

"Oh," Amy said, feeling somewhat disappointed.

"If it's any consolation, you'll be present on Sonic's adventures more than many of his other friends," Gypsy offered.

"I guess that's something," Amy admitted.

…

Sonic frowned. "For some reason, I feel kind of offended by that."

"Well, to be fair, most of us DO have a life outside of you," Vector said. Everyone stared at him. "What?"

"When I'm not being Sonic's sidekick, I'm doing all sorts of scientific research and making inventions to revolutionize the world. Knuckles guards the Master Emerald. Rouge does spy work, or steals gems, and Shadow and Omega usually help her when they aren't going around blowing up Eggman bases for fun and profit. Cream is still enjoying childhood with her mother. Blaze has to rule her dimension. Silver has his thing in the future when he isn't traveling back in time to pester us about some great disaster…which is most of the time…hmm, maybe he doesn't have a life outside of us. Big…fishes, I guess? While Amy certainly DOESN'T have a life outside of Sonic, what exactly is it you guys do when you aren't hanging out with us again?" Tails asked.

"We fight crime!" Vector bragged. Everyone stared at him doubtingly. "…Sometimes," he admitted.

"I can't remember the last time we had a case that didn't involve us fighting Eggman," Espio admitted. "Or actually resulted in a paycheck."

"We're really crummy detectives, aren't we?" Charmy said.

"Come on, we aren't THAT bad!" Vector protested.

"He's right, you're much better detectives than you are a band," Shadow agreed.

"Yeah, that's…HEY!" Vector shouted. Charmy snickered.

"WHY-ARE-YOU-THREE-INCOMPETENTS-DETECTIVES-AGAIN?" Omega asked.

"You'll just have to wait until it's our turn to find out!" Vector said.

"Well, that's something to look forward to," Rouge said dryly. Shadow smirked.

"Yes, but it's not the Chaotix's turn, it's MINE! And I'm not done with my story yet!" Amy snapped.

"What more is there to tell? Sounds like you fell in love with Sonic thanks to this fortuneteller lady showing you the future," Knuckles said.

Blaze shook her head. "I doubt it ended like that. Things are rarely so simple or straightforward where seers are involved. I know from experience."

"She's right," Amy said grudgingly. "Things took an unwelcome turn after that…"

…

Amy watched in awe as Sonic the Hedgehog battled monster after monster, sometimes with others, sometimes with Amy, often alone, but never stopping fighting, never giving up, always running towards victory. And the more she stared at this heroic figure, at his cool blue fur or sharp curved spines or radiant eyes or awesome shoes, the more she knew that he was the one she wanted above all else.

"So when do we get married?" she asked excitedly.

Gypsy blinked. "Eh?"

"Sonic and I! When do we get married?" Amy asked.

"What, uh, what makes you think you'll get married?" Gypsy asked.

"I'm following around and hanging out with a great hero who goes on all sorts of adventures! Seems like a shoe-in to me that we'd get married!" Amy said enthusiastically.

Gypsy laughed awkwardly. "Ah, dear girl, there seems to have been a misunderstanding. You and Sonic do not get married. Not in this world, anyway."

Amy's heart stopped. "What?"

Gypsy's wings fluttered, and the images in the ball shifted, showing different versions of Sonic and Amy, going on dates, hanging out, kissing, getting married, raising children, beating up robots and monsters, and other such storybook romance things. "The multiverse is a vast place. There are many alternate worlds out there. In some of them, you and Sonic are together. In others…" Gypsy's wings fluttered again and the images in the crystal changed once more; this time showing Sonic doing the same romantic things as before… Only with other women. _Lots_ of other women. There were hedgehogs, minxes, cats, foxes, humans, and many more. Interestingly, one of the most frequently reoccurring partners for the blue hedgehog was an auburn-haired chipmunk wearing a blue vest. (And somewhat disturbingly, one of the other most frequently reoccurring partners was a red and black male hedgehog.) "He finds his match elsewhere. And this world, I'm afraid, is one of them."

…

"Wait, are you telling me that there are other universes where you and I are a thing?!" Sonic cried in horror. "What are those other mes THINKING?!"

"Perhaps the Amy's in those universes are more tolerable than the one in this one," Blaze suggested. "Or perhaps she succeeded in her love potion gambit in those other worlds."

"Yeah, that last bit makes much more sense," Sonic agreed.

"Oh, come on! Is the idea of you and me being together in some other reality REALLY that hard to swallow?!" Amy asked indignantly.

"Yes," Sonic said flatly.

Most of the others nodded. "Yeah, I have trouble picturing it too," Tails said.

"THE-ODDS-OF-IT-HAPPENING-ARE-TWELVE-TRILLION-TO-ONE," Omega said.

"I can't see it, sorry," Knuckles said.

"I'm sorry, Amy, but it _does_ seem to be a bit of a stretch," Cream said apologetically.

"Traitor," Amy growled at her so-called best friend.

"Does the idea of me being with other women in other worlds bother you at all, Blaze?" Sonic asked his girlfriend.

Blaze shook her head. "Not really. Those Sonics aren't you. I mean, yes, they ARE you, but not the you I love. They're free to love whomever they please." She smiled. "And perhaps some of those other Sonics have found Blazes of their own?"

Sonic chuckled. "If they have, I hope they're half as lucky as I am."

"Actually, I've heard there are worlds where Blaze and I are a thing!" Silver spoke up.

Blaze raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "You and I? Really?"

Silver shrugged. "The multiverse is a big place. It could happen."

"Auburn haired chipmunk… hmm. That sounds like Princess Sally Acorn of the Kingdom of Acorn," Rouge recalled. "Funny, it seems like you have a thing for royalty, Sonic. When you aren't settling for Amy, anyway!"

Sonic smirked as he wrapped an arm around Blaze. "What can I say? I know how to pick them!"

"Why does everyone seem to think that Sonic being with me is 'settling?!'" Amy demanded.

"BECAUSE-IT-IS," Omega said.

"Wait, wait, back up a second. What was that about Sonic being partnered with a red and black male hedgehog in several other universes? I'M a red and black male hedgehog!" Shadow cried in horror.

Sonic grinned at his rival. "Well, now that you mention it, Shadow… I HAVE always thought you were kind of handsome, in a dark, brooding way…"

"Don't even JOKE about that, faker!" Shadow cried, looking absolutely revolted. "I may be many things, but gay isn't one of them!"

"Shadow, I had no idea you were so homophobic!" Vector joked.

"What?! But that's…I'm not…I'M NOT HOMOPHOBIC!" Shadow screamed.

"Methinks you doth protest too much. Sometimes those who deny it the loudest are concealing a truth they desperately don't want anyone to know about… Are you secretly in the closet?" Sonic asked, clearly enjoying every second of this.

"What closet? He's standing right here in the open with the rest of us," Cream asked, looking confused as Shadow made several strangled noises of dismay and rage.

"Maybe it's a transparent closet," Tails joked.

Knuckles laughed. "Hahahahahaha I don't get it."

"Shadow, why didn't you tell me?" Rouge asked, feigning concern. "If I'd known your preference, I could've made your stay at the club MUCH more accommodating! You know, Bernard's been holding a flame for you for quite some time…"

Shadow ground his teeth so loudly that birds took flight from trees several yards away. "I am having trouble remembering why I bothered to save you all from a plummeting space colony or an alien invasion right now."

"IF-YOU-GO-ON-A-DESTRUCTIVE-RAMPAGE, CAN-I-JOIN?" Omega asked.

"Sure thing, buddy!" Shadow said with what was most definitely not a smile.

"YAY," Omega said.

"Perhaps we should resume the story before Shadow snaps and murders us all?" Espio suggested.

Charmy nodded. "Yeah, I always figured he'll do it eventually, but I'd rather it not be today."

"I'd be happy to finish it," Amy said, getting irritated by all these interruptions.

…

"No! That can't be!" Amy cried. "I'm supposed to get the guy! Mommy told me I was always female lead material, not the secondary girl who gets paired with a spare!"

"Sorry, darling, but that's more or less exactly what you are," Gypsy said apologetically.

…

"If Amy were to be 'paired with a spare,' who would that spare be?" Tails wondered.

"Well, I've got Blaze, you've got that thing with Blaze's friend Cosmo, Charmy's got a crush on Cream, Vector's madly in love with Cream's mom, Rouge is with Knuckles, Omega is a robot, Silver's from the future so might be one of our descendants, and Big is… Big, which only leaves Espio or Shadow," Sonic speculated.

The chameleon and other hedgehog's eyes widened in horror. "I can't be with Amy!" the ninja cried. "I've, ah, taken a vow of chastity as part of my training! Yes, that's it! Vow of chastity, that's the spot!"

"And I'm gay, remember?" Shadow said quickly.

"I thought you said you weren't," said the confused Knuckles.

"If it's a choice between men or the pink hedgehog, I'll take men any day," Shadow said flatly.

Amy's eye started to twitch. "You know, I'm starting to get the feeling you guys don't like me very much."

"Whatever gave you that idea?" Blaze asked dryly.

"You've got a crush on me?" the surprised Cream asked Charmy.

The bee blushed. _D-dammit, Sonic!_

…

"But if I don't get Sonic, then who will?" Amy asked, wondering who it was that she would have to kill to win the heart of her one true love.

Gypsy's wings fluttered, the crystal ball changing to show Sonic holding hands and sharing a meaningful look with a regal cat. "He shall fall in love with a Queen from a distant land, one who's really ugly and smelly and dresses badly and is a cruel and greedy tyrant and stupid and ugly and he's only in love with her because she cast some wicked spell on him because she's totally a witch and did I mention she's ugly?"

…

"Okay, there's no way she said that!" Sonic said.

"She totally did! Honest!" Amy said.

"Uh-huh. Sure," the blue hedgehog said, not believing her.

"I don't believe you!" Knuckles yelled.

Amy scowled.

…

"But do not fret, young one," Gypsy said, noticing the heartbroken look on Amy's face. Her wings fluttered, and the images in the crystal ball began to change yet again. "For you shall one day find true love of your own with–"

"NO!" Amy shouted, lunging forward to grab the ball.

Gypsy started, her wings fluttering. "W-what are you –"

"I don't WANT someone else, I want SONIC!" Amy shrieked, shaking the crystal ball frantically and causing the images to shift and jumble and twist in on themselves like some weird mix between a snow globe and a kaleidoscope. "Show me with Sonic! Show me having our perfect wedding and honeymoon and house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and 2.5 adorable children! SHOW ME! SHOW ME SHOW ME _SHOW ME!"_

"Stop it, you fool!" Gypsy cried, rising from her chair. "If you're not careful, you'll break–"

SMASH!

"It," Gypsy finished, a blank look on her face.

Amy gulped and looked nervously at the fragments of glass covering the table, wailing spirits rising from the shards and dissipating into the ether. "Eheheh… Oops?"

"You. Little. FOOL!" Gypsy shrieked, her wings flaring, all the scales on them flashing with an eldritch light. "Do you have any IDEA what you've just done?!"

"I-I can fix it!" Amy said desperately, trying to pile the pieces of the ball into one heap as an ill wind blew throughout the tent, the ground shook, and she could hear the screams of the damned and ominous chanting from the various artifacts and curios littering the room. "A little glue and tape, and it will be as good as new! O-or, maybe I could buy you a new one! My mom is totally good for the money, I swear! I-I mean, these things can't be THAT expensive… Can they?"

"THAT WAS A GIFT FROM MY LATE MOTHER!" Gypsy screamed, seeming to grow bigger and bigger before the young hedgehog's eyes, an eerie light emanating from her form. "IT HAS BEEN PASSED DOWN THROUGH MY FAMILY FOR COUNTLESS GENERATIONS!"

"So… I'm guessing that means we can't just pick up a new one from the store, then?" Amy said meekly.

"IMPUDENT WRETCH! FOR THIS GREAT WRONG YOU HAVE BROUGHT UNTO ME, A CURSE I SHALL PLACE ON YOUR HEAD!" Gypsy roared, her eyes glowing red and her voice sounding like multiple people were speaking at once, some of whom did not sound particularly friendly. Or angelic.

"Don't you think you're overreacting a little?" Amy asked frantically.

"NO!" Gypsy bellowed. "HEAR YOUR FATE, WORTHLESS ONE! NOT ONLY SHALL YOU NEVER BE WITH SONIC, NOR SHALL YOU EVER LOVE ANYONE ELSE! YOUR OBSESSION WITH A MAN WHO WILL NEVER, _EVER_ BE YOURS WILL GROW SO MUCH THAT IT CONSUMES YOUR ENTIRE LIFE! YOU SHALL BE INCAPABLE OF TELLING OTHERS APART FROM HIM! YOU WILL BECOME SUCH A CARICATURE OF YOURSELF THAT EVEN YOUR LOVED ONES WILL EVENTUALLY TURN AWAY IN DISGUST! YOU SHALL DIE BITTER AND ALONE, CLINGING TO THE DREAM OF A LIFE THAT COULD NEVER HAVE BEEN YOURS! SO SAY I, GYPSY THE MOTH! NOW LEAVE THIS TENT, _AND NEVER RETURN!"_

…

Everyone stared at Amy in astonishment. "… Huh," Sonic said. "Suddenly, a lot of things about you make a lot more sense."

"Come to think of it, she WAS less annoying or obsessed over you at one point," Tails recalled.

Knuckles nodded in agreement. "Yeah, she used to be able to talk to you WITHOUT asking you to marry her every five minutes!"

"And I suppose that explains why she thought I was Sonic from behind," Shadow mused. "And here I thought she was just near-sighted or something." He frowned. "But then, why did the rest of the world think he was me…?"

"STUPIDITY?" Omega suggested.

"Ah, yes, that would explain it," Shadow said.

"You poor thing," Rouge said sympathetically. "All this time, I thought you were a horrid, spiteful , annoying little shrew because that was just who you were…I had no idea it was because of a curse!"

Amy growled. "I don't WANT your pity…"

…

"What about the escape clause?" Amy asked, having to yell to be heard over the wailing spirits.

Gypsy paused, shrinking slightly, and her glow ebbing. "The what now?" She asked, her voice lowering a bit.

"The escape clause! You know, the way to break the curse you just put on me?" Amy asked.

Gypsy frowned. "Now why on Earth would I ever tell you that?"

"Well, because you have to!" Amy insisted. "All the stories say so! Whenever a witch or sorcerer or evil enchanter curses someone else, they also throw in the one way to break it! You know, like making them sleep in stone forever until their Castle is raised above the clouds or the sky is turned into fire, or how a woman must serve a witch until the moon loses her daughter if it happens in a week when two Mondays come together, or that old standby-and my personal favorite-true love's kiss! It's a basic law of magic or something, isn't it?"

"… Dammit, you're right!" Gypsy cursed. "I'd almost forgotten about that… All right, give me a second… Curse escape clause, curse escape clause…aha! I've got it!"

"Is it true love's kiss?" Amy asked hopefully. "PLEASE be true love's kiss!"

"Your curse shall be broken when you are kissed by your true love…" Gypsy started.

"YES!" Amy cheered.

"Who will not be Sonic," Gypsy continued.

"What?!" Amy cried.

"On your 5,973,124,566th birthday," Gypsy went on.

Amy blinked. "Wait, what?"

"Beneath the light of 12 full moons, 70 half-moons, two quarter moons, and 1000 Crescent moons sharing the sky at the same time as 50 red dwarf stars, one supermassive blue star, and a smattering of red and yellow regular-sized stars orbiting a black hole while riding on the back of a 17 legged incredibly dapper giant cosmic crab with a top hat, monocle, and mustache raping the carcass of a giant mauve star whale on the surface of an asteroid made out of an alloy that's exactly 57.3% nickel, 12.5% copper, 10.4% iron, and the rest is made of a mix of neptunium and bubble gum in a nebula shaped like a horse head wearing a rainbow afro 100,000 light years from here in a parallel universe, after you've been bitten and injected with the incurably lethal venom of the Lesser Bolarian Arachnochimp, at EXACTLY thirty-two minutes and forty-three seconds after Eleventy-nine AM, Galactic Standard Time, during a Multiversal Equinox, an event that only occurs every one trillion years and the latest one was about…seven months ago," Gypsy said. "Oh, and you'll be eaten by a Space Dragon immediately after."

Amy's jaw dropped. "But, but that's ridiculous! There's no way I'm going to be able to do all of that!"

"That's the idea," Gypsy said smugly.

"But that's not how it's supposed to work! Curse escape clauses should be actually POSSIBLE for someone to exploit!" Amy protested.

"Of course it's possible for you to exploit this clause!" Gypsy said. "In an infinite multiverse, anything is possible! Now, _probable_ , on the other hand…"

"But that's not fair!" Amy argued.

"Neither was you breaking the crystal ball that's been in my family for generations," Gypsy said.

"But I've never heard of a curse escape clause being that ridiculously complicated before!" Amy pressed.

"Well, of course you haven't," Gypsy said. "Kid, do you know why all those curses you mentioned, all the powerful enchantments laid upon some poor soul by a wicked magician, always get broken?"

"Because good always triumphs over evil?" Amy guessed.

Gypsy laughed hysterically. "No, it's because the guys who cast those curses lack imagination or proper inventiveness, and so are always shocked when their victims eventually find a way to break the spell and seek retribution. Nobody's _ever_ broken any of my curses, because I'm actually smart enough not to give them an easy way out. Now, I suggest you leave before I put a _really_ nasty curse on you."

"But-"

"I said, GET OUT!" Gypsy screamed, a wave of power blasting off her and throwing Amy out of the tent, where she landed with a painful thud at the feet of her mother.

"Amy! Honey! Are you okay?" the older hedgehog asked in concern.

"I think I've just been cursed," Amy groaned as she tried to regain her orientation.

"Well, now you know why I'm scared of fortunetellers," Amy's mother said. "Oh, honey, I'd like you to meet Hood the Cobra," she said, indicating the beautiful snake charmer from before, whose hand she was holding tightly. "She's a new friend who's going to be staying with us for a little while."

"For how long?" Amy asked.

"Ass long asss I am welcome," Hood hissed.

"Well, so long as she doesn't sleep in my room, that's okay," Amy said grudgingly.

"Oh, sweetheart, _trust me_ , that won't be a problem," Amy's mother said, blushing and looking fondly at Hood, who smiled back.

…

"And, ultimately, it wasn't. Mom stopped drinking so much once Hood moved in, and with her help, was able to get a better paying job and clear all of dad's old debts. They got married a few months later. It was very nice. Their anniversary's in a couple of months," Amy said. She frowned, noticing that the others were giving her shocked and somewhat pitying looks. "What? What is it?"

"How could she?" Asked the horrified Cream, starting to tear up. "I know you destroyed her crystal ball, but to give you a curse like that, and then make it THAT hard to break… That's so cruel!"

"Yeah, that's one of the most complicated and ridiculous curse escape clauses I've ever heard of, and I read a lot of fantasy too!" Charmy said.

"Blaze, magic's more common and widespread in your world than it is in ours. Do you think there's anything your wizards can do?" Tails asked.

"I'd have to have them examine her to determine the magical makeup of the curse," Blaze said. "While the escape clause is the standard way to break a curse, there are certain other enchantments or talismans that can be used to suppress or abate its effects." She made a face. "I am not exactly looking forward to bringing her into my realm, but…if it is necessary to help her, then I will do it."

"Don't worry, Amy," Sonic said, taking Amy's hand. "Even though you get on my nerves at times, you're still my friend… And if it'll help make you better, I promise I'll do whatever it takes to break this curse!"

Amy gasped, stars in her eyes. "Oh, Sonic! Thank you so much!…Though you don't need to do that, really. After all, I'm not cursed."

There was a pause. "Wait, what?" Asked the confused Vector.

"But… You just said you were cursed. You told us a whole story about it," said the perplexed Espio.

Amy laughed and waved her off. "Oh, please! That fortuneteller didn't curse me! She was a fraud and a charlatan! That was nothing but smoke and mirrors, she had no real power!"

"It certainly _sounded_ like she was the real deal," Rouge said skeptically.

"And it looked that way in your memory, too," Shadow said. "Though I suppose, given that you were a child, it's possible that your memories from that time might have been clouded somewhat…"

"No, my recording device filters out for that sort of thing using incredibly complicated telepathic quantum circuits," Silver said. "The memory she showed us is what really happened."

"But then why do you claim that you were not cursed, when you quite clearly were?" Asked the confused Blaze.

"I can't have been cursed, because she said that I don't have any future with Sonic!" Amy said. "That's all the proof I need to know that she's a phony, because someone who could REALLY see the future would know I'm going to marry him someday!"

Just about everyone facepalmed. "Oh, for the love of…" Said the incredulous Sonic.

"Well, there goes most of the sympathy I had for," Blaze snarked.

"DOES-NOT-COMPUTE. DOES-NOT-COMPUTE," Omega beeped.

"Wait, but if you think the fortuneteller is a phony, then how do you explain how she was able to quite clearly predict Sonic's existence, or all that other eerily specific and accurate stuff about the rest of us?" Asked the confused Knuckles.

"Don't bother, Knuckles," Rouge said, rolling her eyes in frustration. "I think it's pretty clear by now that 'logic' and 'Amy Rose' don't belong in the same sentence. She probably wouldn't be able to notice the hypocrisy of her story, even if you pointed it out to her with a big neon sign."

"I went to see a lot of other fortunetellers after that," Amy said, ignoring Knuckles' statement and proving Rouge's point. "And I was able to figure out the real ones from the fakes pretty quickly. The real ones told me I had a wonderful future with Sonic, while the fake ones told me I didn't! Granted, the genuine ones often needed a little prompting to give me that prediction, and after a while I got issued a restraining order to stay away from any licensed fortuneteller for the rest of my life, but I don't see how there's any correlation whatsoever."

"…The more she talks, the more I do not understand why she isn't in an insane asylum," said the incredulous Shadow.

"I heard she was briefly committed, but they kicked her out because they got sick of her talking about Sonic all the time," Rouge said.

"WE'RE sick of her talking about Sonic all the time. Why can't we kick HER out?" Espio demanded.

"Because she'd hit us with her hammer if we tried?" Charmy said.

"…Good answer," Espio admitted.

"Since I wasn't allowed near fortunetellers after that, I decided to become one myself! But all of my applications to go to magic school to learn about clairvoyance were rejected for some reason, so I started taking some courses online and got into tarot reading. I'd like to think I've gotten fairly good at using the cards, but I still haven't quite mastered them, because for some reason whenever I use them to try and determine when I'm going to marry Sonic, they keep telling me I won't! Clearly, I'm doing something wrong. Or the cards are defective. There's no other possible explanation," Amy said.

"Amy," Tails said slowly. "Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the reason the cards and everyone else keep telling you that you will never be with Sonic is, quite possibly, because you will never be with Sonic?"

"No," the pink hedgehog said, looking confused. "Whatever gave you that idea?"

Tails sighed. "Oh, no reason…"

"Thank you, Amy. That was… Very informative, and a little terrifying," Silver said. "One more question before we move on. How did you get that hammer of yours?"

"The Piko Piko hammer?" Amy asked, raising her signature weapon. "After I got kicked out of Gypsy's tent, we went to try one of those 'test your strength' games. You know, the ones where you hit a lever with a hammer to try and ring the bell? I hit the bell on the first try, and my mom and Hood both agreed that I had some natural skill with it, so I started training with hammers as I grew older –after all, I couldn't be a heroine who helped Sonic save the world if I didn't have a few skills or two, right?"

"But the only reason you even _knew_ about that was because a fortuneteller you believe to be a phony told you that would happen! That doesn't make any sense!" Argued Knuckles, not yet willing to let it go.

"Just forget it, Knuckles. Some battles just aren't worth fighting," Rouge said.

"After the Little Planet incident, I finished my training and my parents gave me this hammer as a birthday present," Amy concluded. "And I've had it with me ever since!"

"Huh. And here I thought you got it from a magic wish-granting ring that also made you older or something," Vector said.

"Why would you think that?" Espio asked.

Vector shrugged. "It makes much sense as anything else about our lives."

"True," the chameleon conceded.

"I had a magic wish-granting ring once," Sonic reminisced. "Well, technically it was a magic wish-granting GENIE bound to a ring who lives inside a book. I wonder how she's doing these days…"

"Now, I have a question for YOU, Silver!" Amy said, fixing the time traveler with a determined gaze.

"Uh…And what question would that be, Amy?" Silver asked nervously, getting a bad feeling about this.

"You're from the future!" Amy said. "Which means you must know when Sonic and I will finally get married!"

Silver, who knew no such thing because it was never going to happen ever, swallowed nervously. "Now, uh, you know, I can't tell you too much about the FYOO-CHURR, Amy. It could disrupt the fabric of the space-time continuum, after all!"

"Oh, come on! Can't you just give me a little hint?" Amy pleaded, giving Silver big puppy dog eyes while simultaneously tightening her grip on her hammer. "Pleeeeease?"

Silver thought carefully. He quite quickly came to the realization that if he gave Amy an answer she did not like, she would probably cave his head in with that hammer of hers. He did not want his head to be caved in. He liked his head. He needed it to do stuff. After some very careful consideration, he finally said, "There will be a very beautiful wedding in your future."

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Amy squealed so shrilly that the others flinched and Rouge cried out in agony and clutched her head due to her supersensitive hearing. "Oh, thank you, Silver! Thank you so…waaaaait a minute… You didn't say WHO was getting married! And for that matter, you didn't even explicitly say that it was ME getting–"

"Team Chaotix!" Silver cried desperately. "It's your turn!"

"Oh boy!" Charmy cheered.

"Oh, joy," Espio sighed.

"All right! Whadda you got for us, Silver?" Vector asked.

"From what I've heard, you and a few others used to be a team of heroes," Silver said. " **What happened to those others, and how did you go from a team of heroes to a detective agency?** "

…

And that's that story done! Was I a bit cruel to Amy here? Maybe a little… But it was all in good fun, wasn't it? And to be fair, she HAS been getting a bit more and more deranged in her affections towards Sonic over the years, though that might just be my interpretation. She wasn't always this crazy regarding him, was she?

Anyway, the Chaotix are the focus of the next chapter. Time to pick whose backstory will be revealed in the one after that! And to make things more interesting, aside from the original selection of **Knuckles, Rouge, Cream, Big** (and Blaze), after suggestions from some of my other readers, I've decided to add **the Babylon Rogues, Shade** , and **Sticks** to that list. (Yes, the one from Sonic Boom. Don't worry, there's a good reason.) Please choose which of these you would like to feature in the chapter after next, and if there are any other characters who you'd like to see make an appearance, please let me know.


	4. The Chaotix Mystery

And we're back! I've been looking forward to this chapter for a number of reasons, one of which is because I'm going to be trying a somewhat experimental writing style for part of it. Experimental for me, anyway. I hope I do well!

This chapter is also noticeably longer than its predecessors. To longtime fans of my work, this should not come as a surprise, given how often things tend to run away from me. To new readers, I'm sorry and hope you have the patience to sit and read it all. Future chapters shouldn't be as long as this…I think.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me

…

"How we became detectives, huh?" Vector said. "Well, that's a complicated story, and involves a bit of context."

"A backstory for our backstory, in a sense," Espio added.

"Oh, joy," Shadow deadpanned. Rouge shushed him.

"A few years back, the three of us, along with Sonic's childhood friend Mighty the Armadillo, were all on Carnival Island for one reason or another," Vector said. "I was looking for a job, Mighty was traveling all over the place for chance to prove himself a hero like his pal Sonic, Charmy was visiting with his parents, and Espio lived on the island before it got bought up and turned into a carnival without anyone asking his opinion on the matter."

"That wasn't very nice!" Said a shocked Cream.

Espio shrugged. "Eh, the island was kind of a dump beforehand anyway. Turning it into a giant Carnival actually improved it a bit."

"So your origin takes place in a carnival, just like Amy's?" Blaze asked.

Charmy nodded. "You, except none of us pissed off a fortune teller and got horribly cursed!"

"I wasn't cursed! She was a fraud!" Amy insisted. Nobody believed her.

"Who's this 'Mighty' character?" Rouge asked Sonic.

"An old pal of mine from South Island. We went to school together and hung out all the time, but after I started heroing full-time we saw less and less of each other," Sonic said regretfully. "He left to become a hero himself, in hopes of catching up to me. We used to compete all the time before I got my speed. Back then, he was nearly my equal. After that, not so much…he DID always have me beat in feats of strength, after all. Heck, I think he's even stronger than Knuckles!"

"Now, let's not exaggerate," Knuckles said with a huff.

"He's not exaggerating, Mighty really is stronger than you," Charmy said. Knuckles scowled.

"So there we were, just minding our own business and trying to enjoy the Carnival, when suddenly Eggman shows up and conquers the whole island, the big jerk!" Vector said, slamming a fist into a palm. "He wanted the Power Emerald, an experimental new energy source being used to power everything on the island, to fuel his evil world domination schemes! Most of us got captured, along with pretty much everyone else on the island, but Espio managed to escape and hooked up with Knuckles, who'd been passing by on Angel Island, saw what was going on, and stopped to lend a hand."

"That was very noble of you, Knuckles," Tails said, impressed." Usually, if something's happening on the surface, we have to drag you away from that island of yours to do something about it!"

"Sometimes literally," Amy added.

"Actually, the energy fluctuations being given off by the Power Emerald were interfering with the Master Emerald's power, so I kind of had to go down to see what was going on or else the island wouldn't budge," Knuckles said. "Otherwise I'd have just passed by without a second thought."

"Oh," Tails said, looking disappointed.

"That wasn't very nice of you, Mr. Knuckles," Cream said accusatorily.

"My job is to guard the Master Emerald first and foremost," Knuckles said with a huff. "The only reason I leave it to go on adventures with you guys is because you practically drag me kicking and screaming if I don't just say yes whenever you stop by."

"And because you're secretly bored and lonely and crave a distraction from your dull job?" Rouge said with a smirk.

"No!" Knuckles denied fiercely. Nobody believed him.

"The two of them managed to free the rest of us, and we also managed to team up with Heavy and Bomb, two of Eggman's mechanics who went rogue and decided they didn't want to help their boss do bad stuff anymore," Vector continued.

"Just like you, Mr. Omega!" Cream said.

"YES, EXCEPT-I-AM-INFINITELY-SUPERIOR-TO-THOSE-OUTDATED-MODELS," Omega scoffed. "ALSO-I- _LOVE_ -DOING-'BAD-STUFF,' I-JUST-DON'T-WANT-TO-DO-IT-FOR-EGGMAN."

"Hear hear," Rouge said.

"By tapping into the power of some weird 'Chaos Rings' which happened to be lying all over the place, we managed to drive Eggman off the island, and save the day!" Vector continued.

"We also fought a giant red Metal Sonic for some reason," Espio added.

"We were heroes! Everybody loved us!" Charmy cheered. His face fell. "Unfortunately, we couldn't find my parents afterwards. To this day, I still don't know what happened to them. I'm sure they aren't dead… Maybe Eggman took them or something… Whatever the case, I know I'll find them someday!" Vector and Espio exchanged guilty looks, but said nothing.

"Afterwards, Mighty suggested that, instead of going our separate ways, we stuck together to form a team of heroes, seeing as how we'd worked so well together," the chameleon said. "And so the Chaotix were formed. We chose Knuckles to be our leader, and moved in with him to Angel Island, to help him continue guarding the Master Emerald as well as use the island as a floating base of operations that we could use to travel all over the world, fighting evil wherever we found it."

"And find my parents!" Charmy added.

"Ah, right, that," Espio said uncomfortably.

"I'm surprised at you, Knox. You seem to HATE anyone else living on that island with you!" Sonic commented. "Which is kind of weird, considering how big and empty and lonely it must be sometimes."

"It's not that bad," Knuckles lied. "And besides, they kind of grew on me. I thought it might be nice to have some company for a change to help me in my sacred duty."

"Then why aren't they still living on that island with you now?" Shadow asked.

"Because the jerk changed his mind and kicked us off a week later!" Vector snapped.

"You broke the Master Emerald 10 TIMES! And you were only up there a few days!" Knuckles shouted back.

"…Seriously? How did you manage that?" Asked an incredulous Sonic.

The Chaotix blushed. "We'd rather not talk about it," Espio said.

"Let's just say that mistakes were made, and leave it at that," Vector said.

"Yeah, mainly yours," Charmy said.

"Yeah, mainly… HEY!" Vector exclaimed. The bee snickered.

"We kind of figured that was it, and were willing to pack it in, but Mighty wasn't ready to throw in the towel just yet, and convinced us that, even though our leader had abandoned us, we could still be heroes," Espio said.

"Good old Mighty… That sounds like something he'd say," Sonic said fondly.

"I did _not_ abandon you!" Knuckles insisted.

"Mighty took charge and suggested we become heroes back in his hometown of Southopolis, reasoning that since his old pal Sonic was usually on the move these days, it might be a good idea to have someone staying around to guard the home front," Vector said.

"That's reasonable," Shadow agreed.

"Unfortunately, we were flat broke, so couldn't afford transport to South Island, and Mighty was too proud and embarrassed to ask for his parents to send him money," Espeo said.

Sonic sighed. "Yeah, that ALSO sounds like Mighty."

"So, we figured we'd just stay where Knuckles dumped us and become heroes of that place!" Vector said.

"And that's how the Chaotix came to North- by- Northwestopolis!" Charmy declared.

"…North-by-Northwestopolis?" Asked the incredulous Blaze.

"Yeah, it's further east and north than Northwestopolis, but not as north as Northopolis," Vector said.

"Ah," Blaze said vaguely.

"North-by-Northwestopolis? I've been there," Sonic said. "They've got a nice bistro… Mighty bragged a few times in his letters that he'd set up shop there, but after a while, he stopped writing, and when I went by to visit, nobody seemed to want to talk about him."

"There's a reason for that," Espio said nervously.

"So, we got approval from the mayor to become official town heroes, got funding for our own headquarters, lots of publicity, very nice… And then nothing happened," Vector lamented.

"Nothing?" asked the confused Tails.

"Nothing," Vector said flatly.

"You know how in comics, usually supervillains and major mob bosses and whatnot only seem to start showing up AFTER the hero puts on his mask and starts running around fighting crime?" Charmy asked. "Well, that did not happen to us."

"Nothing happens in North-by-Northwestopolis. Ever," Espeo said angrily. "In fact, it's practically the city's motto. They have it written on a big plaque outside of town hall, for Chaos's sake!"

"Despite being an average sized city, there's barely any crime or violence or supervillainy at all in North-by-Northwestopolis," Vector complained. "Probably because it's not as scenic or historic as Northopolis, nor is it the big transit and industrial hub that is Northwestopolis. It's just… Kind of there in between. Like Espio said, nothing happens there… Which makes it a TERRIBLE place for a team of superheroes to live!"

"IT-SOUNDS-TERRIBLE-TO-ME," Omega commented.

"Yeah, not my kind of place," Rouge agreed.

"North-by-Northwestopolis is okay, but yeah, I didn't really spend long there…it's kind of dull, you know," Sonic said. "Not my thing."

"But isn't a peaceful town where nothing bad ever happens a good thing?" Asked a confused Cream.

"Not when you're a group of heroes who badly need to pay the bills and are unable to provide the city with justification to put you up," Espeo said.

"The most exciting thing that happened in our first few months was Eggman stopping by to get a bite to eat at the bistro," Vector said. "It's all the papers talked about for weeks afterwards. That and how he paid full price, instead of stiffing the bill or just blowing up the place so he wouldn't have to pay anything."

"Yeah, it really is a good bistro," Sonic reminisced fondly.

"It must be, for Eggman to pay full price," said an impressed Shadow.

"He STILL hasn't paid us for rescuing him from Metal Sonic," Espio grumbled.

"We also beat up a mime," Charmy said. "They threw us a parade for that."

"I still don't get why, it was just a mime. He wasn't doing anything evil," Espio complained.

"Espio, he was a MIME. He's inherently evil. That's all the excuse you need to beat one up," Vector said.

The others nodded in agreement, except for Big, who was fishing, and Cream, who did not agree, though it was less because she liked mimes and more because she hated violence in all its forms. "In my time, being a mime is punishable by death!" Silver said.

"What a wonderful future!" Amy gushed.

"It's the same in my world," Blaze said.

"What an awful place!" Amy hissed. Blaze rolled her eyes.

"We tried to expand our team roster in a desperate attempt to gain publicity and maybe attract some bad guys to town, or encourage the criminal element to step up their game," Vector said. "Mighty was able to convince one of his friends back on South Island, Ray the Squirrel, to come up to join us, and we also managed to recruit Bark the Polar Bear and Bean the Dynamite."

Rouge blinked. "Wait…I know those names…" Shadow shushed her.

"Ray?! He was on your team?!" Sonic exclaimed. "Huh, guess that explains why he up and left home one day…"

"Another old friend of yours?" Blaze asked.

Sonic nodded. "Yeah, but he was sort of Tails' rival and considered himself to be Mighty's sidekick for a little while…since, you know, they're both short, yellow, smart, flying mammals."

"It's been years since I've seen Ray," Tails recalled. "I wonder if he's still bitter about how I always beat him at everything… Races, flying, science fairs, mathletes, getting girls…"

"Girls? Really?" Amy asked skeptically.

"I'm a multiple-tailed fox. Practically a kitsune. You have _no_ idea how attractive that makes me to some people," Tails said smugly.

"Aren't you too young for that sort of thing?" Knuckles asked.

"No," Tails said.

"You recruited some dynamite named Bean?" Asked the confused Cream.

"Well, if they already had a robot named Bomb, I suppose he could have been another walking explosive," Blaze reasoned.

"No, though 'walking explosive' is probably a good description for him. Bean's a duck who really, really, REALLY likes explosives," Amy said. She shuddered. "And I mean REALLY likes them. I was glad when I never saw him again after that whole fighting tournament thing to destroy the Death Egg."

"He was thrilled when he found out that he was on the same team as a walking bomb," Charmy said. He made a disgusted face. "And then they started dating… It was really weird."

"DISGUSTING," the revolted Omega agreed. "A-ROBOT-DEIGNING-TO-BE-WITH-A-SQUISHY-IN-THAT-MANNER? DISGRACEFUL!"

"Are you sure you aren't just angry that despite being an older-model heroic rogue Eggman robot, he was able to find love before you and so has another 'first' on you?" Shadow joked.

"NO," Omega said sullenly. "AND-BESIDES, IT'S-NOT-LIKE-HE- _STAYED_ -"

"No spoilers!" Charmy hissed. "We aren't there yet!"

"Unfortunately, that move backfired on us," Vector said. "Not only did we have even more mouths to feed and take up space, but Bean kept blowing up buildings with Bomb on their dates, and the city wanted US to pay for them!"

"And then, one day, our big break came in," Espio said. "We heard that Fang the Sniper, the world's number one hit man and bounty hunter, and one of the top 10 most wanted criminals in just about every country on Earth, happened to be passing through town."

"Was he there for the bistro?" Sonic asked.

"He was indeed," Espio said.

"That must be a really good bistro," Blaze commented.

"I'll take you sometime," Sonic promised.

"I have no idea what a bistro is, nor do I actually care," Knuckles said.

"Fang, Bean, Bark…a lot of names from that tournament popping up all of a sudden," Amy commented.

"Fang the Sniper? What kind of animal is a Sniper?" Asked a confused Cream.

"Snipers aren't animals, Cream, they're people who can shoot and kill a target from really far away," Tails said. "Fang used to be called Nack the Weasel, but decided to change his name because he thought 'Fang the Sniper' would look better on his resume once he branched out into the professional killer business."

"Oh my," the rabbit said, frightened.

"Aw, he wasn't that tough! When he entered that tournament with us, he used pop guns!" Knuckles said.

"That's because it was a tournament, and he wasn't fighting to kill," Amy pointed out.

Rouge nodded. "Fang has a MASSIVE collection of guns, many of them so illegal that you could spend the rest of your life in prison for so much as LOOKING at one of them, let alone shooting it. He's so dangerous that even WE have hesitated to go after him just yet. We're good, but we're not quite at his level yet."

"We'll get there some day," Shadow said. "Omega and I have been training for quite some time on and off the shooting range for over a year now. When GUN finally sends us after Fang, we'll be ready."

"Well, WE certainly weren't ready, although we certainly thought we were," Vector said with a sigh. "Instead, we made possibly the biggest mistake of our lives…"

…

A purple and white weasel with a big brown stetson hat, brown boots with white gaiters, brown gloves with metal plates on them, one canine larger than the other, and a long, thick, purple tail pushed open the door to Sal's Bistro, one of the best eateries in all of North-by-Northwestopolis. "Good morning, sir!" A fancily-dressed blue and black armadillo with a big bushy brown mustache standing behind a lectern said cheerfully. "Welcome to Sal's Bistro! How may we be of service today?"

"I'm here for a bite to eat, please," the weasel said gruffly. He paused, regarding the armadillo with a frown. "Are you new here? I eat at this place pretty often – – best damn bistro in all the northern territories! – – But I don't believe I've ever seen you here before."

"I am indeed new, Sir," the armadillo said with a bow. "Just started a couple of weeks ago."

"Hmm. Dolores usually works the front at this time of day. She all right?" The weasel asked.

"She's just fine, sir. Decided to take a vacation to South Island. One of the best places on the planet to live in, except for good old North-by-Northwestopolis, of course!" The armadillo said.

"Eh, it's all right, I guess," the weasel said with a shrug.

…

"Just 'all right?!'" Sonic cried. "How dare he! South Island's the best damn place in the world!"

"I thought that was Spagonia," Tails said.

"Second best damn place in the world!" Sonic said, without changing his tone.

…

"Would you like a table or booth, sir?" The armadillo asked.

"Booth, please. The one in the back, that you can't see from any of the front windows, but gives a good view of the front door, backdoor, kitchen door, and bathrooms. You should know the one," the weasel said.

"Certainly, sir. Oh, but first… One little thing?" The armadillo pointed to a sign hanging from the front of his lectern, which said. 'No weapons allowed.'

The weasel frowned. "That's new. That's never been a problem before."

"There was an incident recently," the armadillo said vaguely.

"Really? But nothing ever happens in this town. It's one of the appeals," the weasel commented.

"Yeah, or one of the biggest drags… Err, I mean, a mime was involved," the armadillo said quickly.

"Oh, well, that explains everything," the weasel said. He sighed. "Normally I'd just turn and leave… But I'm rather hungry, and I like this place well enough to give it a pass just this once. So, you want me to leave my weapons here? Well, son, this might take a while…"

15 minutes later…

"And… Let's see… I think that should be the last of it," the weasel said, tossing a serrated knife into a pile of guns, blasters, staffs, knives, swords, blades, rocket launchers, bombs, grenades, ammunition belts, and pretty much every other implement that could be used to stab, shoot, bludgeon, obliterate, or otherwise kill someone imaginable that was at least five times as tall as he was, and just about reached the ceiling.

The armadillo gawked. "That's…Th-That's a lot of weapons," he said weakly, face pale.

"In my line of work, I find it's a good idea to never be left without a weapon," the weasel said. "So. That booth, please?"

…

"…I-THINK-I-AM-IN-LOVE," Omega said after a moment, awed.

"I thought you said romance between a robot and an organic was disgusting?" Rouge asked in amusement.

"I-WAS-SO-WRONG!" Omega cried.

"That's… A lot of things that could be used to kill a guy," said the disturbed Sonic.

"Not even I have that many," Shadow said. "Yet."

"Exactly how many people has this Fang killed?" Blaze asked.

"Let's just say 'a lot' and leave it at that," Rouge said.

"Oh my," Cream squeaked.

"Yeah, now I'm really glad we didn't let him use real guns during the tournament," Tails said.

…

The armadillo led the weasel to a booth near the back of the restaurant. As a bistro, the eatery was fancier than a diner, but less so than the sort of restaurant you might want to take a date on only to discover that the prices are way too high and the dishes way too small. The floors were made of hardwood so polished you could see your reflections in them, chandeliers with glittering bits of glass and crystal dangled from the ceiling along with a stuffed alligator wearing a top hat and monocle, their light refracting across the room, partial walls with mirrors and shelves containing small but tasteful works of art created partitions to make the place look a bit bigger than it actually was, and the walls were lined with pictures of famous people who'd dined there in the past. A surprising number of them were of legendary heroes, criminals, world leaders, and even supervillains; such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Dr. Eggman, the Commander of GUN, the president of the United Federation, and the weasel himself.

…

"… Wow. That must be a REALLY good bistro," said an amazed Amy.

"It really is," Sonic said fondly.

"Now I REALLY want to go," Blaze said.

…

Seating was provided in the form of round or square tables with masterfully carved chairs and booths with plush leather seating. Currently, only a handful of these seats were occupied. There was a grizzly bear drinking coffee and reading a newspaper in a booth near the window seated across from a fly filling in the pictures on his kids menu in crayon, a rather twitchy-looking pink duck sitting alone at a small table was picking at his casserole while tightly keeping his trench coat closed, and an orange-haired yellow crocodile in a flower-patterned dress was stuffing her face with gusto in a corner close to the kitchen door. "Slow day?" The weasel commented, noticing how few people there were in the bistro.

"We're going through a bit of a dry spell. Business will pick up soon, I'm sure of it," the armadillo said optimistically as he seated the weasel at the requested booth. "I'll send a server out in a moment. Would you like something to drink?"

"Peach tea with extra honey and a dash of lemons, please," The weasel said.

"Not coffee? Or, uh, something with a bit of alcohol in it?" Asked the surprised armadillo.

"Nah, can't handle the stuff," the weasel said.

"I'll, uh, see about getting you some, then," the armadillo said, heading for the kitchen.

While he was gone, the weasel opened the menu sitting on the table in front of him and perused the various delicious options presented to him. He wasn't really paying much attention to them, though; he already knew what he wanted.

A little later, a green squirrel dressed in the same uniform as the armadillo came up to the weasel and placed a steaming teacup on a saucer with a small biscuit on the table before him. "Here you go, sir. One peach tea with extra honey and a dash of lemon."

The weasel delicately picked up the cup and inhaled the sweet aroma wafting from the liquid within. A crooked smile forming on his angular face, he took a sip and sighed blissfully. "Ahhh, that's the stuff."

"Do you need more time to decide on your meal, or are you ready to order?" The squirrel asked, taking out a notepad.

"No, I'm ready. I'll take what I usually have: a French onion soup with a side salad and some French bread, please," The weasel said.

The squirrel jotted the order down and nodded. "Coming right up, sir." He headed for the kitchen.

…

"French onion soup with a side salad and some French bread? Not really what I'd expect a guy like that to eat," Amy commented.

"He may be a thug and a mercenary and an unrepentant killer, but he has rather refined tastes," Rouge said.

"I approve, that's a pretty good dish," Sonic said.

"I'll be sure to have some when we go then," Blaze said, smiling at Sonic, who grinned back.

"Just to be clear, those guys _were_ you and the others in disguise, right?" Knuckles asked uncertainly.

"Yes. Why, wasn't it obvious?" Vector asked.

"O-of course it was! I just wanted to make sure for Cream's sake," the echidna spluttered.

"It seemed pretty obvious to me, Mr. Knuckles," Cream said. "Why, did you have trouble telling it was them?" Knuckles flushed and looked away.

"I-THOUGHT-THIS-WAS-SUPPOSED-TO-BE-A-STORY-OF-YOU-TRYING-AND-FAILING-TO-CATCH-FANG-THE-SNIPER, NOT-OF-HIM-HAVING-LUNCH! THIS-IS-BORING!" Omega complained.

"Give it time, it's gonna get good really soon!" Charmy assured the robot.

"Or really bad, depending on your perspective," Espio said with a grimace.

…

While the weasel waited, he took out his PDA and checked his mail and the latest information on local bounties. According to his sources, Gonorrhea the Goat was hiding in a cave somewhere north of town, and if he could catch him alive, it would be a sweet 50 million Rings in his account. And if he continued on his way to Northopolis, he could fulfill a contract Don Cornelius had put out on a scumbag who'd impregnated his daughter then ran out on her, and if he brought back the bastard's genitals, that would be another cool 100 million in the bank.

Oh, and his sister's birthday was coming up. He made a note to himself to find something nice to get her. Sure, she'd tried to kill him the last time she saw him, but that was just business, nothing personal, he'd have done the exact same thing in her position. Family's family, after all.

…

"…That's kind of messed up," said a disturbed Knuckles.

"He has a sister?!" Amy asked in disbelief.

"Yes, Nicolette the Weasel," Rouge explained. "She's also a bounty hunter, and may be even more competent than her brother, but she's not as vicious, which is why he ranks higher on the most wanted lists."

"I don't understand. They're siblings. Why would they try to kill each other?" Asked the confused Cream.

"Clearly you've never had a sibling," Blaze said.

"Neither have you," Tails pointed out.

"Well, yes, but I've encountered some pretty twisted and messed-up sibling relationships in my time," Blaze said.

"Am I the only one here who is wondering what sort of horrible parents would name their child GONORRHEA?!" Sonic asked.

"The same kind who'd name their son Hemorrhoid the Hippopotamus?" Shadow said.

Sonic blinked. "…That's a real person?!"

"Yep. And with a name like that, you can probably understand why he become a serial killer," Rouge said.

"What did Gonorrhea do, then?" Tails asked.

"Sexual predator," Rouge said.

"Ick," Tails said, face screwed up in disgust.

"What are gonorrhea or hemorrhoids?" Cream asked.

"You're better off not knowing," Tails said.

"Actually, I've no idea what those are either. I don't think we have those in the FYOO-CHURR," Silver said.

"We'll tell you when you're older," Shadow joked. Silver scowled.

"Wait, how did you know what Fang was thinking if you weren't Fang?" Knuckles asked in confusion.

Vector started to answer, and then paused, exchanging confused looks with the other two. "That's…actually a very good question…"

…

Several minutes later, the squirrel returned with the weasel's meal. "Here you go, sir," the squirrel said, putting out a steaming bowl with a crust of cheese over it, a smaller bowl of salad, and a small dish with slices of bread on it on the table before the weasel one by one.

Once more, the weasel inhaled the rich scent wafting off of his meal. "It smells delicious. Thank you."

"I'll pass your compliments to the chef," the squirrel said.

"Yeah, it's a shame I'm not going to get the chance to eat any of it," the weasel said sadly.

The squirrel blinked in confusion. "Why not?"

The weasel grabbed the squirrel's right wrist, slammed his hand on to the table, and drove his knife into it, pinning it to the wood. As the squirrel howled in surprise and agony, the weasel picked up the bowl of soup and slammed it into the squirrel's face, causing him to scream even higher as the scalding hot contents burned his face. As the other 'guests' and the armadillo stared in shock, the weasel grabbed the squirrel by the fur on the top of his head, and then slammed it into the table repeatedly, blood and bits of teeth flying everywhere, until he stopped moving. The weasel ripped the knife out of the squirrel's hand and calmly rose to his feet, regarding the horrified Mobians with a wry grin. "I must say, this is probably the most amateurish attempt to capture me I've seen yet. And just so you know, there has never been anyone by the name of Dolores who's ever worked here. You should have done your homework better before setting this up, boys."

"Get him!" The armadillo yelled. The bear and 'fly' rose from their seats and charged towards him, along with the crocodile and armadillo, while the duck started fiddling with something under his coat.

"This just gets better and better, because if you really HAD done your homework, lads…" Fang the Sniper's grin turned even more demented. "Then you would know that I don't NEED my guns to kill someone. So long as I can fit something into my hand, I'm never without a weapon!"

He snatched up the fork and spoon and flung them, along with the knife, at his assailants. The projectiles flew through the air faster than most silverware should've been capable of, ricocheting off the floors, wall, seats, and tables, before hitting the exact spots the weasel had calculated they'd impact. The fork pierced Charmy's wing just as he was passing by one of the partial walls, pinning it to the wooden surface. Charmy cried out and tried to pull free, only to flinch and stop when his wing started to tear, and gingerly tried to pull the fork out without hurting his wing any further. The knife pierced Bark's knee, and he stumbled, tripping over a chair and slamming into another wall, causing the little pieces of art on the shelves to fall down and land on his head, knocking him out. The spoon flew right down Vector's throat as he opened his mouth to shout something, and he gagged, choking on it. As he collapsed to the floor, heaving and gasping, Fang ran over and punched him in the chest, causing him to spit the spoon out. The weasel snatched it out of the air, and then spun around, smacking the crocodile in the face with his tail hard enough to fling him into a wall, his long snout smashing through it and getting stuck, as well as knocking him out.

Screaming in wordless fury, Mighty curled into a ball and rolled towards Fang. The weasel flung the spoon end-first at the floor right before the armadillo, causing it to embed at such an angle that when Mighty ran into it, he was knocked off course and flew into the air. Fang quickly ducked before the ball of plate armor could take his head off, and Mighty slammed into the wall behind him hard enough to crater it, smashing several of the pictures hanging there, though not, thankfully, Fang's own.

Suddenly, a big heavyset robot burst out of the door to the kitchen, raising a cartoonish round red bomb with a face and limbs into the air, fuse lit, at the same time as the duck stood up and threw off his coat, revealing he was wearing a bomb vest. Cackling insanely, he raised a hand, revealing he was holding a detonator. His thumb lifted, preparing to press down on the trigger…

And Fang whistled. With the roar of an engine, his hover bike, the _Marvelous Queen_ , smashed through the plate glass window at the front of the bistro and rammed into Bean, flinging him into the air and causing him to drop the detonator. He slammed into Heavy's chest and fell to the ground, dazed. Heavy and Bomb looked down at their comrade and boyfriend respectively in concern, giving Fang the chance to whistle again. His hover bike responded, firing a harpoon from its front that embedded itself in Heavy's chest. The robot looked down at it in surprise, and Fang whistled a third time, causing the _Marvelous Queen_ to reverse, yanking on the harpoon and causing Heavy to topple over and fall onto Bean, crushing him.

Fang raced over to the detonator, snatched it up, knocked over a table and leaped behind it, then pressed the trigger, setting off Bean's vest. There was a muffled explosion from underneath Heavy, but the robot's bulk compressed it and kept it from destroying the entire building, just as Fang had predicted it would. Heavy groaned and tried to pull himself up, relatively unharmed by the blast – – he had been built to work with Bomb, after all, and it wouldn't do for him to be vulnerable to his own partner's explosive nature, let alone anyone else's – – but Fang whistled a fourth time, and a pair of cables shot out from the front of the _Marvelous Queen_ and planted themselves on the robots body, channeling several million gigawatts of electricity into him. Normally Heavy's body would've been insulated from something like that, but the _Queen_ was preprogrammed to auto-target joints and armor chinks where such protection was imperfect and exploit them to maximum effectiveness. Giving a strangled cry of agony, the robot collapsed again, further flattening the charred – – but otherwise intact – – duck beneath him.

Fang heard a hissing noise, and turned in time to see the enraged Bomb charging at him, fuse almost burned out completely. Without breaking a sweat, Fang hocked up a loogie and spat it at the walking explosive, the glob of saliva soaring through the air and striking the fuse just before it could enter the top of Bomb's head, snuffing it out. As Bomb stumbled in surprise, Fang rushed over and lashed out with a kick, launching the robot at Charmy, who'd just managed to extricate himself from the wall without harming his wing any further, sending both of them flying through another plate glass window and out of the restaurant entirely.

"You… You BASTARD!"

Fang whipped his head around to see Mighty had recovered and was charging towards him, leaping into the air and preparing to crawl into a ball to bowl him over. The weasel grabbed his oversized fang, ripped it out of his mouth, and flung it at the armadillo's chest. Mighty blinked in surprise as the false tooth impacted his stomach and exploded, flinging him into Bark, who had managed to gain some semblance of consciousness and was starting to get up, knocking the bear out again. Mighty groaned, his head spinning, trying to get his act together…

But Fang didn't give him the opportunity. The weasel ran over and started laying into the stunned armadillo with a flurry of punches, kicks, slaps, and stomps, hitting Mighty over and over and over until even his natural thickness and body armor were not enough to protect him from the pain. After what felt like hours, but was really just a few minutes of sustained pounding, Fang finally stood up, wincing and shaking his hands in pain. "A tough one, aren't you? Think I almost broke a knuckle…" He paused and frowned. "Wait… Why do I feel like I'm forgetting…"

His fist snapped backwards, impacting what appeared to be thin air. There was a pause, and then Espio the Chameleon flickered into existence, Fang's fist embedded in his face. The chameleon's eyes rolled backwards, and with a groan, he fell to the ground, out cold. "There we go. That's everyone accounted for."

"You… This… This isn't…The end…" Mighty wheezed through broken and bleeding lips, struggling to get back up, only to find that his vaunted strength had abandoned him in his hour of need.

"Actually, I'm afraid it is," Fang said, walking over to his bike. He opened a compartment in its side, pulled out another false tooth, and screwed into his mouth. "I'll give you amateurs credit for one thing. It's not often I have to break out my fake teeth. Most people think this thing's just for show. They fail to realize that EVERY part of my body is a weapon, in more ways than one."

"You won't… Get away with this…" Mighty gasped.

"You're right, I certainly won't get away with the delightful lunch I was about to have before you idiots ruined things. Now I'll never be able to come back to this bistro, which is a shame, as it's one of the best in all the northern territories," Fang complained. "Given how unprofessional and badly you handled this trap of yours, I'm going to assume you aren't working for any of the thousands of people who want my head and were just a bunch of idiot kids trying to make a name for themselves as heroes by taking down the big bad Fang. Am I right?" Mighty gurgled, but by this point was incapable of saying anything more. "I'll take that as a yes. Let me give you a word of advice, kid. I've MET heroes. I've FOUGHT them. And you and your crew? You aren't heroes. You aren't even close. You aren't even fit to take on that idiot Eggman, let alone a REAL bad guy. If I were you, I'd get out of this game before it kills you. Better Mobians then you have tried to play and failed to make the mark. I should know. I've killed most of them."

He grabbed his bike by the handles and gently steered it over to the front of the restaurant, where he patiently inspected and stowed away his massive pile of weapons one by one, before writing out a check and placing it on the nearby lectern. "There, that should about cover the damages. Should be more than enough to fix this place up and get it back in business in no time. Oh, and before I forget…" He hurled some Rings over at Mighty. They hit the badly battered armadillo in the face, causing him to flinch. "A little something for your trouble, mate. Thanks for the entertainment." Chuckling, he swung himself up into the _Marvelous Queen's_ saddle, gunned the engines, and left the bistro through the broken window the bike had come through in the first place, leaving the Chaotix behind to wallow in their failure… And the massive amounts of blood oozing from their horribly injured bodies as they waited for the ambulance to show up.

…

Everyone stared at the three sullen Chaotix in disbelief. "Holy crap," said the shocked Amy.

"He's even more dangerous than we'd heard," said the alarmed Rouge.

"I think we're going to need a bit more training," Shadow said.

"I-THINK-I-WANT-TO-MARRY-HIM," Omega said, lovestruck.

"How the… He wasn't that strong when we faced him before! How did he get that powerful?!" Asked the horrified Knuckles.

"He was holding back before? He didn't feel like going all out? He underwent lots of training and possibly illegal genetic and cybernetic modifications between now and then? Or maybe we were just that pathetic?" Espio said with a shrug. "We may never know for sure."

"How awful…" Cream whispered.

"Mighty… Ray… Were they…" Sonic asked anxiously.

"They survived," Vector said sadly. "But they were never quite the same after that."

"Yeah, and Charmy's face got horribly disfigured from that super-hot soup, so he won't be competing with you for girls anymore, Tails," Charmy said.

The fox grimaced. "Unfortunately, I can take no pleasure in that."

"That debacle spelled the end of the Chaotix as a team of superheroes," Espio said. "For trashing one of the city's finest establishments and driving away a frequent high paying visitor, we were stripped of our title and privileges, lost our hideout, and were told to either get a job and live like everyone else, or we could get the hell out."

"Most of us left after that," Vector said sadly. "Bark and Bean, who always had rather shaky moral compasses before then, decided that being good was for suckers and chased after Fang, hoping to join him. For whatever reason, he took them on as his apprentices, and together they formed Team Hooligan, a twisted Team with Fang on Speed, Bean on Flight, and Bark on Power. Together, they've committed even more crimes and become more dangerous than they ever could have alone."

"Which means we'll need to be even stronger and deadlier to take them down," Rouge murmured.

"Heavy and Bomb also decided to revert to their original evil programming, but instead of rejoining Eggman, they decided to become terrorists. They've killed hundreds of people around the world with their bombs, and often work together with Team Hooligan to kill even more people," Espio said.

"On the bright side, Bomb and Bean got married!" Charmy said. "The wedding was great! Well, until they blew up the chapel and killed most of the guests."

"It's a good thing we had some spare lives, or that would've been the end of us," Vector commented.

"Yeah, we're probably going to go after them too someday," Shadow said.

Rouge nodded. "They're on the most wanted list as well."

"AND-THEN-I-SHALL-PROVE-THAT-I-AM-THE-SUPERIOR-FORMER-EGGMAN-ROBOT!" Omega declared.

"And that you're just as good at killing as they are?" Shadow asked.

"THAT-TOO," Omega said.

"That's a horrible thing to aspire to!" Cream gasped.

"I-DON'T-KNOW-IF-YOU'VE-NOTICED, BUT-I'M-NOT-EXACTLY-A-GOOD-INDIVIDUAL," Omega said.

"Ray still wanted to be a hero despite it all, but was rather disillusioned with the whole solo vigilante or team thing, so wound up joining GUN to become a spy," Espio said. "We never heard from him again after that."

"I've met him a couple of times," Rouge said. "He works with a partner, Cowblink the Moose. They work in counter-espionage and often deal with spies from other countries."

"Well, I'm glad he's okay…" Sonic said uncertainly.

"Lucky, spies get all the girls," Tails said.

"Even horribly disfigured ones?" Amy asked.

Tails shrugged. "Some girls are into that sort of thing."

"…How do you _know_ these things?!" Knuckle asked.

"Internet," Tails said.

"And the three of us stayed with Mighty, because he was so broken and depressed after that we were afraid of what would happen if we left him on his own," Vector said.

"And because we had nowhere else to go," Charmy said.

"That too," Vector said.

Sonic clenched his fist and ground his teeth. "Mighty…"

"You could not have known, beloved," Blaze said, putting a paw on his shoulder.

"I should have known! I should've been there!" Sonic snapped. "He was my friend…"

"Not even the fastest thing alive can be everywhere at every time," Blaze said sadly.

Sonic narrowed his eyes. "Not yet."

"Sonic, are you contemplating a course of action that would make you so fast you can LITERALLY be everywhere at every time, so you can be some sort of one-Mobian global police force?" Tails asked. "Because if so, I would highly recommend against it. That sort of thing NEVER works out well in comics."

"Well, if it doesn't work out in COMICS," Sonic grumbled, but subsided.

"Mighty was able to get an apartment where the four of us could all live together until we could all make enough money to move out and get a place of our own," Vector said.

"Which never happened, seeing as we're still living in that apartment now," Espio said.

"I tried to get a job as a DJ, but I was barred from every club in town because they claimed I had no musical talent whatsoever, and since I had absolutely no other marketable skills at all I wound up doing nothing but sitting on the couch all day watching television," Vector said.

"They couldn't afford to send me to school, so I got a job as a sign spinner at a strip mall until I was let go because I'm apparently too young to have a paying job due to child labor laws, so spent all my time at home watching television with Vector," Charmy said.

"I took a mail-order class to be a ninja, figuring that there'd probably be some big bucks in that field, but unfortunately I can't stand the sight of blood, so nobody would hire me to be an assassin, and so was forced to perform at birthday parties for horrible children," Espio said with a shudder. "It was like being in the same room with dozens of other Charmy's for hours on end… It was the most horrible experience of my life."

"Wait, so you weren't part of some ninja clan or trained in Far-Eastopolis?" Tails asked.

"I wish," Espio said wearily.

"How are all these cities actual places?" asked an incredulous Blaze.

"Personally, I've always thought it weird that you don't have an abundance of –opolises in _your_ world," Sonic said.

"And Mighty got the only job available for someone of his skills… As a male escort," Vector said.

"A male escort?!" Sonic cried, aghast.

"Yes, a male escort," Vector repeated.

"What's a male escort?" Cream asked.

"Something you're too young for, sweetie," Rouge said, looking bemused.

Cream frowned. "I'm getting rather tired of those…"

"But Mighty has super strength! Why couldn't he get a job in construction, or demolition, or bodybuilding, or something like that?" Sonic asked.

"He tried to, but the problem was, his super strength made him TOO good at them," Espio explained. "The unions argued that because he could do the work of at least 10 or 20 men all by himself, it would deny lots of other people jobs, so lobbied for him to be denied employment in those areas."

"But that's ridiculous! Aren't there laws against that sort of thing?!" Amy demanded.

Espio shrugged. "Either they don't have them in North-by-Northwestopolis, or everyone was still angry at him for causing so much damage to Sal's, and were willing to look the other way. It's one of the city's biggest sources of revenue, after all."

"On the plus side, whenever he came home, he brought lots of money!" Charmy said. He frowned. "On the downside, he always looked like he hated himself and we could usually hear him crying himself to sleep."

"…Dang," Tails said.

"Knuckles, this is all your fault!" Sonic said angrily.

"My fault?! How is it my fault?!" Knuckles demanded.

"If you hadn't thrown them off of Angel Island, they wouldn't have wound up in that mess!" Sonic said.

"They broke the Master Emerald 10 times! 10! Times! What else was I supposed to do?!" Knuckles asked.

"Well, clearly something other than that, especially because by abandoning them you indirectly led to four people becoming incredibly evil and dangerous criminals, one of my oldest friends was permanently disfigured, and the other got stuck as a MALE ESCORT!" Sonic snapped.

"Yeah, well… I've absolutely no idea what a male escort is," Knuckles admitted. "Is it really that bad?"

"Yes, is it?" Cream asked.

Rouge sighed and whispered something in Knuckles' ear. His eyes widened. "Guys can DO that?!" She nodded. "Wow. Well, uh, now I feel bad."

"You totally should!" Sonic said angrily.

"This is all very informative, as well as hilarious, but how did it lead the three of you to become detectives?" Silver asked.

Vector sighed. "Now that's another sad, sordid tale. And it all began on the day when Mighty disappeared…"

Sonic blinked in confusion. "Disappeared?"

Vector nodded. "Yes, the saddest day in my life…next to getting thrashed by Fang, or when I got told I have no musical girlfriend, or when I found out my online girlfriend was actually a robot…anyway, it all started on a boiling hot summer day…"

…

North-by-Northwestopolis.

The city too far south to be Northopolis, but too far east to be Northwestopolis.

A city smack dab between two great metropolises, constantly reminded of the grandeur and wealth of its neighbors, but never quite able to achieve it itself.

A city with a million stories, all of them with sad endings.

MY city.

…

"Uh, Vector, what are you doing?" Asked the confused Tails.

"Oh, no…" Espio groaned. "Vector, you promised you wouldn't do this again!"

…

The sun was pounding down on the city like something really hot and heavy hammering down on something else really hard. The streets were so hot you could boil eggs on them, though why you would want to, I don't know, because it probably wouldn't be very hygienic, unless you were homeless, of course, in which case you'd probably be desperate and hungry enough to do it anyway, assuming that you hadn't already been killed from the intense heat or exposure, and there weren't really a lot of homeless people in North-by-Northwestopolis anyway, so the point is moot.

It was even hotter in the apartment where I and my three companions roosted, the air sizzling with sweltering heat, as if a tiny bit of Hell had been transported into our building and we somehow managed to rent it, and were now being punished for our myriad sins by burning in the infernal heat of that dark realm, though I've never really understood how Hell could be so dark anyway, if there was so much fire in it, though it was also as if the air conditioner had broken down and we didn't have enough money to fix it, which was the actual reason it was so hot and not because our apartment was from Hell, although considering how nasty our landlord was, he MIGHT have well been a demon, in which case maybe the entire building was actually part of Hell, we'll probably never know for sure, unless I spill holy water on our landlord or something, which is probably a bad idea because he'd evict us.

…

"What is he doing?" Asked the dumbfounded Blaze.

"Something really stupid," Espio said sourly.

…

I took a long, deep, sip from my can of soda, feeling a sliver of relief from the unrelenting heat as the refreshing liquid slid down my throat, though perhaps not as much as I would have if were beer instead of Chaosade (A bit of chaos in every can!™), but we didn't have beer so I had to make do, or if the liquid was actually cold, which it wasn't because the fridge had broken down and we didn't have enough money to pay for it to be fixed, so the energy drink was only marginally cooler than the rest of the apartment. The intense heat was causing my reptilian blood to go as sluggish as a slug crawling about the garden in the middle of summer, and were it not for my laser-sharp focus, and the several gallons of energy drinks I'd consumed over the last few dozen hours, I would probably have fallen into a deep, dark, slumber, not unlike death, except I would probably have returned from the slumber eventually, unlike death, from which there is no return, unless you have extra lives, which I also happened to possess.

Before me, resting upon a crooked end table that needed thick phone books and cheap-ass porno magazines to be propped under three of its legs to keep it from wobbling or toppling over, like a holy icon perched atop a rather shitty altar, was the only appliance in our hell of an apartment that actually worked: that most sacred of technological artifacts, the idiot's lantern that enthralled all who gazed upon it, a cruel and merciless God who provided hours upon hours of mind-numbing entertainment in return for your brain cells and an exorbitant cable bill, our television. (And it wasn't even a very good television, either, it didn't show color, the screen was cracked, and it had antenna that needed to be frequently adjusted to keep the picture even remotely clear, which came as a bit of a surprise to us when we got it because we hadn't thought television with antenna EXISTED anymore, that they'd gone extinct like the dinosaurs, so it was as if this machine was a relic of a bygone age, one which should have died out long, long ago.)

I had spent the last 72 hours wide awake, keeping my strength up with copious amounts of energy drink and pizza, watching a film noir movie marathon on the Hard-boiled Private Eye Network, and now yet another movie was winding down to the expected grin, tragic ending: the protagonist's faith in humanity or Mobianity even lower than before, his friends and loved ones either dead or turned traitor on him, the beautiful dame who roped him into this web of conspiracy and deceit laughing at him for his foolishness, and the real bad guys, the fat cats who run society, getting away with everything because the law enforcement was too incompetent or corrupt to stop them, because it's Eastopolis, son. (Granted, I'd drunken so much Chaosade at that point that I was having trouble telling reality from fiction and all the movies had started to blur together after a while, though whether that's because I was losing my mind from too much sugar and caffeine and lack of sleep or because so many of them were more or less exactly the same, I can't say.)

As the credits rolled, white text crawling up a black background, like lost souls rising from this sinful earth to the Paradise which is promised to them, unaware that that Paradise was nothing but a lie concocted by so-called holy men and philosophers to keep the working schmucks in line with promises of a blissful eternity if they allowed themselves to suffer under the thumb of whoever held all the power now, my eyes wandered the apartment, taking in the squalor of the squalid hovel—though that might be considered an insult to hovels-which was our home. Pizza boxes rose in towers around the ragged, worn couch covered in stains from liquids I did not dare to think about on which I was seated that we'd pulled out of a dumpster, like the skyscrapers of some great metropolis with flies and cockroaches scuttling about like mindless pedestrians going about their pointless everyday lives blissfully unaware of just how easily their life could be snuffed out at a moment's notice, much like the one I found myself in now, and I was a giant monster from the dawn of time here to wreak havoc and fight other monsters and the useless military and chase after busty dames for reasons which are never fully explained.

The door to the kitchen was shut, several wooden planks nailed over it, a sagging chair wedged under the door knob, and several paper slips which Espio swore were made with authentic ninja sealing magic were plastered all over its surface, an eerie glow occasionally shining through the cracks and grotesque noises periodically filtering through from the other side, much like how the dark secrets we keep from our friends and from ourselves occasionally peek out from the imperfect masks we use to guard ourselves and give others a glimpse of the horrible, bottomless evil lurking within us all. I once again made a note to see if we could get a priest, an exterminator, or possibly both in to take look at the horrible Abomination that had spawned from our broken refrigerator and merged with the Atrocity that slithered out of the dishwasher and sink to become a Thing That Should Not Be, which we were fairly certain would wipe out all life on Earth if released from the kitchen and allowed to feed on the filth from our apartment, and what's worse, would probably not pay the rent.

The door to the bedroom was open. Sometimes we slept in there, just like most people slept in bedrooms, or in the comforting lies they tell themselves to help them get through the day and keep from falling into despair at the sheer pointlessness that was everything, the sheets soiled by fluids of all sorts, though mainly urine since Charmy had a bed-wetting problem. It also had a bathroom. Not much else to say about that, except for…uh… Yeah, I got nothing. It was actually relatively clean compared to the rest of the apartment…Ooh, like how even in the most sordid, dirty, corrupt of souls can sometimes be found a single speck of purity and goodness, a spark of innocence that had not been crushed by the horrible weight of the world! Shit, this stuff's good, I should start writing it down!

The fan whirred overhead, but since it had only one blade, it was completely useless and unable to provide any respite from the boiling heat whatsoever, much like a one legged tripod is useless for anything but maybe serving as a walking stick if you were too cheap to buy a cane, which we most certainly were. The nearby window to the outside was open, though by open I mean we'd broken it in a desperate attempt to get some fresh air, one which had failed, and all it brought us was the stench of the overfilled dumpster in the alleyway several stories below, which the garbage men had yet to get around to because they were on strike. It smelled like broken dreams, but also like garbage, which it was.

…

"I'm feeling both incredibly confused as well as utterly depressed," Cream said.

"You aren't the only one," Shadow said.

"That's awful! How can anyone live like that?!" Amy demanded.

"Well, not all of us can have a nice uptown apartment paid for by our parents," Espio sneered.

"Hey! They don't pay for my apartment!" Amy protested. She hesitated. "Well… Not ALL of it..."

"Is he talking like the narrator of a hardboiled noir detective story? Is that what's going on here?" Rouge asked.

"I don't know what noir is. We don't have it in the FYOO-CHURR," Silver said.

"Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United Federation during the Great Depression, usually involving an incredibly cynical and heartbroken detective or cop struggling to solve a crime amidst massive corruption, getting in way over his head, and if he's lucky, gets a bittersweet ending at best," Tails explained.

"Oh," the time traveler said.

"Those don't sound like the sort of movies my mother would let me watch," Cream said.

"She'd be right not to," Shadow said. He smiled fondly. "I've always had a soft spot for them, though. I always used to watch them with–" He cut himself off with a grimace.

"Vector, why are you talking like the narrator of a hardboiled noir detective story?" Blaze asked.

"Because I'm a detective telling the story of how he got involved in a case! It's traditional!" Vector insisted.

"No, it's stupid," Espio said. Vector ignored him.

…

Dangling from the single fan blade snoring like a chainsaw cutting down a 10,000-year-old tree which had done nobody any harm and provided shelter and shade for countless animals and people over the years just because some housing development wanted to tear down the forest to make room for more cookie-cutter neighborhoods for the nouveau riche and was doomed to be converted into toothpicks and toilet paper to wipe the asses of the ignorant masses or pages in shitty porno mags like the ones propping up the television table to be read by the ignorant masses while they're wiping their asses in the bathroom was Charmy the Bee, the youngest and most innocent of my companions, his revolutions causing him to repeatedly bump into the stuffed alligator we'd swiped from Sal's after that awful debacle so we wouldn't feel like we'd left empty-handed also dangling from the ceiling and causing it to gently sway a little. I could not help but smile fondly, like a crocodile, which I was, as I looked up at him. I could not help but admire his cheerful spirit and boundless, naïve optimism. Despite all the horrible hardships life had dumped on him, despite being separated from his parents at a carnival and held captive by a madman who had a strange, almost fetishistic penchant for shoving animals into robots, despite getting a new home and immediately losing it because of some jerkface of an echidna going back on his word, despite trying to be a hero only to be spurned and turned on by the people we swore to protect, despite getting the crap kicked out of him by the most dangerous weasel alive, despite losing most of his newfound friends and having to share living space with three utter failures of adults in a horrible apartment in a crummy city far from proper civilization, despite not being able to go to school or play with kids his age or even being able to hold down a job to help out the rest of us, despite having to be exposed to all sorts of horrible things a child of his age should never have to witness, he still had hope that everything would turn out for the best, and that he would one day find his parents again. He should be our role model, instead of the other way around.

None of us had the heart to tell him that we'd actually found his parents a long time ago, but when we tried to get in touch with them about reuniting him with his family, they told us they didn't want anything to do with him and had in fact intentionally abandoned him at the carnival because his obnoxiously shrill voice got on their nerves.

…

"Wait, WHAT?!" Charmy shrieked.

Espio facepalmed. "Dammit, Vector! We promised never to tell him!"

"Whoops," Vector said sheepishly.

Amy gasped. "That's horrible! What parent could possibly do that to their child?!"

"Didn't your mother abandon you at the carnival so she could sleep with a belly dancer?" Blaze asked.

"…Well, yeah, but she came back!" Amy protested weakly.

"As horrible as it is, I can't exactly blame them," Shadow said. "His voice IS really annoying. I can't count the number of times I wanted to wring his neck when he kept shrieking about finding those data discs on Prison Island…It was almost as bad as when Vector kept harping on me to find the computer room!"

"…I wasn't THAT bad…" Vector said defensively.

"Yeah, you really were," Shadow said.

"Mom and dad…Don't love me?" Charmy whispered, horrified.

"Don't worry, Charmy…" Cream said compassionately, hugging the distraught bee. "Even if your parents don't love you, I know someone who does!"

Charmy looked at her, eyes wide with hope. "You do?"

Cream nodded, smiled, and turned Charmy around to face Vector and Espio. "Yes, them!"

"Oh," Charmy said, disappointed.

"Huh? Oh, uh, right. We, uh, totally…Err…Love you. Yes," Espeo said. "That is totally something we do, right, Vector?"

"Huh? Oh, right. Yes. That," Vector said awkwardly. Charmy glared at him. The crocodile swallowed. "Let's, ah, just continue then, shall we?"

"Can we do it without the hard-boiled detective narration?" Sonic asked.

"No," Vector said.

…

My gaze continued to tour our sordid kingdom until it came to a framed picture hanging crookedly from a nail in the wall. We tried straightening it once, but then the ceiling stirred to cave in, so we figured it was a loadbearing picture or something, and decided to leave it as it was. It showed the 9 of us, the Chaotix, in happier times, right after we'd officially become the city's heroes, got what we felt would be a complete roster, a brand-new hideout, and felt like we could take on anything that came at us. Before we'd suffered defeat after crushing defeat that broke our spirit and our team and sent many of our numbers away, into the waiting arms and bosom of pure evil, flocking to it like a lonely man flocks to a cheap whore. Several of Espio's kunai were embedded in the picture, cracking the glass, and it would've been symbolic and pretty freaking awesome if they pierced the faces or hearts of those of us who turned their backs on their team, their family, to seek their own fortune, but Espio had actually thrown them before his aim had gotten really good, so most of them were either piercing nothing or, somewhat eerily, the four of us who had stayed behind. There's probably something symbolic about that, but damned if I know– –or WANT to know– –what the heck it is.

I felt a profound sadness as I looked upon the smiling faces of the 9– –well, six, five of our faces were obscured by kunai– –Mobians in the picture, wondering yet again if things couldn't have gone any other way, or if everything, inevitably, would have led to the sad, sorry fate which had befallen us all. If we'd known then what we know now, would any of it have mattered? Would we have stuck with each other through thick and thin? Would we still be living in this awful apartment? God, I hoped not. Especially that last bit. Our apartment was terrible.

The apartment door opened, and someone entered. Unfortunately, it wasn't a busty dame with a mysterious past and dark purpose, but my companion Espio the Chameleon, who also had a mysterious past and dark purpose, but I wasn't into him at all. Even if his purple skin and yellow horn _did_ look rather fetching in the right light…And I'd always found ninjas to be kind of sexy, like most people… And then there's that thing he could do with his tongue…

…

Espio coughed. Vector blushed and quickly changed the subject.

…

"Ugh, that was possibly the worst party yet," Espio groaned as he entered the room, slamming the door behind him and causing some of the pizza box skyscrapers to collapse on themselves. "All those children with grubby hands and runny noses TOUCHING me… Haven't their parents ever told them to wash their hands?! Not to mention that I think a good number of them were sick, and I barely avoided getting thrown up on several times…They asked me to do my invisibility trick so many times I feel like I need to shed my skin a few times, my hands are cramped from all the shurikens they insisted I throw, and the moms kept HITTING on me, and a couple of the dads did too!" He made a face. "Also, I think I might've stepped in something, and I really hope its mud, though I don't think it was."

Typical Espio. Even when the sun was shining on a cloudless day when nothing could go wrong in the world, he'd still find something to complain about, like how it was too hot or the sun was getting in his eyes or something like that. "Well, at least you got paid," I told him, having trouble keeping my eyes on both him and the television, which had just started to show another movie. "And I assume you had cake, which is always a nice bonus."

Espio growled. "It was CHEESECAKE. I HATE cheesecake. You know I'm lactose intolerant!" He shuddered. "Trust me, no amount of money is worth a lonely, lustful suburban mom pulling on your tail because she heard it was a turn-on for reptiles."

"But it is," I pointed out.

"That doesn't mean it's not sexual harassment!" he snapped. He frowned when he saw what I was doing. "You're STILL watching those stupid movies? Have you even left the couch since I left this morning?"

"Hey, they're great movies!" I said defensively. "And I can't stop now, the marathon isn't over!… I think," I said uncertainly. Considering that I was missing large gaps of time from my memory due to spending the last several hours without sleep while chugging way too much energy drink, it's possible the marathon had ended some time ago, but I didn't notice because it was the Private Eye Network, and just about every movie or show they aired could be considered film noir. Even the comedies. Heck, ESPECIALLY the comedies. "And I got off this couch! Probably. I mean, I must've gotten up at some point, to use the bathroom… Right?" I said, again, somewhat uncertain. The stain covering the ratty old cushion I was sitting on had been there before, right?

"And why is Charmy hanging from the fan?" The chameleon asked, looking upwards at the bee as he slowly revolved over our heads.

"…It's Charmy. Who can say?" I said with a shrug.

He grunted, conceding the point. "Where's Mighty? Now that I've completed another job, we need to pool our paychecks together to see if it's enough to pay for the rent this month. That hellspawn landlord of ours has been strongly insinuating that if we don't get it to him within the next week, he'll break our kneecaps and throw us onto the street. And while I'm starting to think at this point that living on the street may actually be marginally BETTER than living in this dump, I'd rather do with my knees intact."

"Oh, Mighty got a call from the agency that one of his most frequent clients wanted him, so he had to head out," I said. Poor Mighty. For a guy stuck doing a horrible, awful job that no sane self-respecting Mobian would ever get caught dead doing if he had any other option, he was awfully good at it.

"Which one?" Espio asked.

"Mr. Carruthers," I said. I mentioned he was awfully good at it, right? Good enough that his clientele weren't necessarily all of one gender?

Espio grimaced. "You mean the one that…"

"Yep," I said.

"Who has all those…"

"Yep."

"And likes to…"

"Yep."

"While wearing…"

"Yep."

We stared into space a moment before shuddering in revulsion. "That poor soul."

"Yeah."

"Still, better him than us."

And as horrible and selfish as that sentiment was, I could not help but agree with him. After all, even the most experienced of male escorts, who took the most enjoyment and pleasure in their jobs, all trembled in fear at the thought of having to service Mr. Carruthers, who –

…

"Uh, Vector?" Espio interupted. "I… Don't think they really need to know about that part."

Vector hesitated, noticing the horrified looks on everyone's face. "You… May have a point there."

"I take it back, I don't think I ever want to know what a male escort does," Cream said.

"A wise decision," Blaze said. "Well, you may change your mind when you're older, but you don't need to now."

"Oh, Mighty…" A horrified Sonic said, shaking his head in disbelief. "How could you let them DO that to you? Why didn't you just come home?"

"Because Mighty's the kind of guy who doesn't give up easy, nor is he one to ask for help if he doesn't think he needs it," Tails said sadly. "Kind of like you, Sonic."

Sonic smiled sadly. "That's something us South Island boys tend to have in common, huh?"

"How bad could this Carruthers guy be?" Rouge asked skeptically.

"Pretty bad," Espio said.

"I own a nightclub, am rather… _Active_ , and have certain… _Proclivities_. I'm no stranger to _unusual_ preferences," Rouge said, still skeptical.

Espio whispered something into her ear. She turned even paler than usual and immediately threw up. "Oh God! That is sick! SICK!" She shrieked.

Silver scoffed. "Please, in the FYOO-CHURR everyone's pansexual, and just about anything's acceptable. You need not hold anything back for the sake of my sensibilities."

Espio whispered something into his ear. Silver turned even paler than usual. "I stand corrected," he said before throwing up.

"Oh great, now I feel like throwing up too," Amy said.

"Please don't, or _I_ might throw up!" Knuckles said anxiously.

"WILL-YOU-ALL-STOP-VOMITING-AND-GET-ON-WITH-THE-STORY-ALREADY?" A disgusted Omega asked.

Vector nodded. "Right, right. Anyway…"

…

"As horrible as Mr. Carruthers is, at least he pays well," Espeo said. "Granted, the agency gets far too much of a cut, but at least it'll be enough to get the landlord off our backs for another month or so. Maybe even clean this place up a bit, though I'm not particularly optimistic. Do you have any idea when he'll get back?"

I struggled to recall, my brain a murky haze resembling the swampland habitats of my unevolved ancestors and distant relatives, including my cousin Joe and his sister/wife Emily, on account of my lack of sleep and far too many energy drinks, as has been mentioned previously. "Um… Let's see… I believe he got called out yesterday evening…"

Espio frowned. "Last night? Why didn't you mention this before?"

"Because when you got home yesterday you spent a couple of hours ranting about how horrible little Timmy's birthday party was before storming off for bed, and didn't ask about Mighty," I said.

"Oh," Espio said, looking somewhat embarrassed. "Well, I'm asking now, so…"

I struggled to remember some more, sifting through sleepless and energy drink-addled memories like a prospector trying to pry tiny flakes of gold from dirt he found in a riverbed, desperately hoping that this is it, this was the big one, this was the one that would put him on easy street, either ignorant or willfully oblivious to the fact that all the gold worth getting had already been dug up ages ago, and all he had left were crumbs which would barely pay for the cost of the land he'd given up everything to stake a claim in, abandoning his wife and children for the dreams of a golden future in the West. Or North, depending on which time the hypothetical prospector was living in. "He called about…uh… I think it was just after dawn to say he'd finished up with Carruthers—he had to spend the night, the poor bastard-and would be home in a couple of hours."

"And you didn't mention it this morning because…? " Espio asked.

"Because you didn't ask, and because I was so enthralled by the movie I was watching I may or may not have noticed when you got up and left for work this morning," I admitted sheepishly.

Espio rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Vector, it's almost sunset. If Mighty called after dawn, doesn't that mean he should be home by now?"

I blinked in surprise. "Huh…Yeah, you're right. He SHOULD have been…"

"Vector, are you sure that's when he called? Are you absolutely certain you didn't get the times mixed up or anything like that?" Espio asked.

I thought very carefully. There was a chance he was right, given how much of a mess my head was at that moment, but… "No… No, I'm certain that's when he called, because a little before that I could hear the Hatcher family crowing, followed by just about everyone else in the building– –including you– –waking up and screaming invectives and curses and death threats at them, and you know they only do that when the sun rises."

Espio frowned in thought. "You're right, it must've been this morning… But then why isn't he home?"

I shrugged. "Maybe the agency had another job for him, and he didn't have time to come home to change and rest before it?"

"Perhaps, but if he had, surely he'd have called to let one of us know… Hold on," Espio said, pulling out his cell phone. He speed-dialed Mighty and turned away, holding the phone to his ear. Several seconds passed, and the chameleon's frown deepened, like the seafloor as you go further away from shore until it eventually bottoms out into a dark, dark abyss filled with horrible sea monsters and sunken cities and slumbering alien gods waiting for the stars to be right, so that they may awaken and destroy us all. "It's going straight to voicemail. Either his phone is off or it's out of juice."

"Try the agency," I suggested, my attention now almost completely drawn away from the television, though I was still watching the newest movie's opening out of the corner of my eye, glimpsing it just is one desperately tries to catch the past, always receding from them as they move ever forward into an uncertain future.

Espio tried the agency. It took him several minutes to navigate their infernal and overly complicated automated menu system, as labyrinthine and ever-changing as the great maze the ancient Minotaur was imprisoned in, or the line at the DMV, only with worse music to listen to while you were on hold. "Hello, this is Espio the Chameleon," he said when he finally got an actual person on the other end of the line. "I'm the roommate of Mighty the Armadillo, one of your employees? I heard he finished a job early this morning and should have been home by now. Did you happen to assign him any other work today?" His brow furrowed. "You didn't? I see. Have you had any contact with him since then? No? I see… Well, if you hear from him, please let us know. Our number should be on file. Thank you very much." He hung up and turned to me, a look of concern on his face. "They don't know where he is either."

"You think something happened to him?" I asked in alarm, worry for my friend, leader, and the highest earning member of our household cutting through the remaining fog crowding my consciousness and snapping me into full focus.

"Maybe, but I have no idea what," Espio said with a frown. "Someone still upset about what happened to Sal's Bistro? Team Hooligan returned to kill him as part of some twisted way for Bark and Bean to prove to Fang they've truly gone over to the dark side? Eggman, intending to use him as a way to strike at his childhood friend Sonic?" He grimaced. "Or worst of all, maybe Mr. Carruthers wasn't quite ready to let him go just yet?"

We both shuddered at that thought. There were fates far, far worse than death in this world, and that was one of them. "Let's hope it's one of those first options," I said.

"Yes, it would be preferable," Espio agreed. "Let's not leap to conclusions just yet. He might be late for any number of reasons. He might've had a problem with public transportation, or got held up playing Good Samaritan again, for example. He could be just fine."

"Or he could be in horrible danger!" I exclaimed.

"Or he might have ditched us," Espio said grimly.

"He would never do that!" I snapped furiously. Knuckles had left us, Bark had left us, Bean had left us, Heavy had left us, Bomb had left us, Ray had left us. Mighty would NEVER leave us. He was the glue that held us together, and not the cheap kind of glue that dissolves in water or the sort of glue you use to seal an envelope which tastes really horrible and I still don't understand why they make you lick the damn thing because there's probably all sorts of nasty toxins and poisons in it, but the expensive heavy-duty stuff. He was as dependable as the day was long, if not longer, since a day was either 12 or 24 hours long, depending on how you measured it, and Mighty would be reliable for way past that time. Even though he'd been more or less completely and utterly broken by Fang, his hopes and dreams shattered beneath the weasel's boot, and a bit of his soul dying every day he went to work, he would never leave us. We were all he had now, and he us. He couldn't leave, or he'd have to admit everything he'd done or strived for had been for nothing, which it kind of was, if you thought about it too hard.

"No, he probably wouldn't," Espio admitted. "You're right, he wouldn't do that." He thought for a few minutes. "If he isn't back by tomorrow, we'll call the police."

"It might be too late by then!" I protested. "And besides, do you REALLY think the cops will drop everything to find someone in Mighty's line of work? The fact that they all still blame him for wrecking Sal's can't help either, which is totally unfair, because it was all Fang's fault!"

Espio grimaced. "You may have a point there. But what else can we do?"

As I considered this, the television caught my eye again. The movie currently airing was an old one, one I'd seen a few times in the past. Four detectives, brothers in all but name, jointly ran an agency together, and when one of them vanished pursuing a case, his friends dropped everything to try and get him back. I couldn't remember how the story ended, but I'm sure they got him back in one piece, right? (As it turned out, that's not how it ended at all. The missing guy went bad, joined the mob, and killed the three heroes so that he could collect on their life insurance policies. He made out like a bandit and lived out the rest of his rather long life as a wealthy, happy man. Why did so many detective stories have to end so badly?) An idea hit me like a freight train, but not really, because if I'd been hit by a freight train. I would be dead, and ideas can't kill you, unless they're really stupid ones, like 'hey, I wonder what would happen if I jumped in front of a freight train?' "I've got it!" I shouted. "We'll find him ourselves!"

Espio frowned. "And how do you propose we go about doing that?"

"Well, we pretty much failed at being superheroes, so why not try being a different kind of hero? Namely, detectives?" I suggested. "We'd still be fighting in the name of justice, but we might actually get paid for it, too!"

Espio stared at me blankly. "Vector, none of us have even the slightest experience in being a detective."

"You're a ninja, I just finished watching a marathon of what felt like almost every detective movie ever made, and Charmy can fill out our ranks by being the requisite kid sidekick audiences despise, but the studios keep putting in anyway because they have absolutely no understanding whatsoever of what the public actually wants! I'd say we're overqualified!" I said enthusiastically.

Espio stared at me in wordless awe, clearly impressed by the brilliance of my idea. "Vector, you've come up with a lot of ridiculous and moronic ideas in your time, but I'm pretty sure this is the stupidest you've ever had." Or not.

"It's a great idea!" I insisted.

"Vector, watching a lot of television, being a ninja, or having a kid sidekick isn't enough to be real detectives!" My party pooper of a comrade insisted.

"Well, what will it take, then?" I asked.

"Well, you need… Oh no, you aren't going to fool me like that! If I tell you what you'll need to be a detective, you'll just use it to go and become one!" The chameleon said, seeing through my cunning plot which I had totally concocted just that minute, and had not been asking out of honest curiosity, really.

"Well, I don't care what you say, we're going to become detectives!" I said firmly, crossing my arms. "And Mighty left me in charge when he's not around, so that's that!"

"…Mighty left ME in charge!" Espio protested, clearly delusional. "After all, I'm the only one here other than him who actually brings in any money!"

"Hey, can you guys keep it down? I was trying to sleep," Charmy groaned from above us as he woke up. He blinked, noticing that the room, from his perspective, was spinning wildly around him. "Why is the room spinning?"

"We aren't spinning, you are," Espio said. "You're hanging from the fan."

"Oh," Charmy said. "How did I get up here?" We shrugged. He frowned at us. "What are you guys arguing about?"

"Well–" Espio started.

"Mighty's disappeared, and we're going to become detectives to find him!" I interjected quickly, seeing my chance.

"We are? Awesome!" Charmy said.

"What? No, we aren't!" Espio protested.

"Charmy wants to do it, and so do I! You're overruled two to one, Espio! We're going to be detectives!" I said triumphantly.

"But… That's… This isn't a democracy!" Espio screamed in indignation, clearly furious by how easily my reptilian cunning had outsmarted his own reptilian cunning, which was also reptilian and cunning, but less so than mine!

Charmy cheered and started dancing, or as well as he could, given that he was still dangling from the fan blade. "Oh boy! We're gonna be detectives, we're gonna be detectives, we're gonna be detect–whoa!"

As it turned out, trying to dance while dangling from an already rather unstable fan blade was not exactly the best idea. The blade snapped, and Charmy plummeted towards me like a yellow and black-striped winged bullet wearing goggles that could probably stand to lose some weight fired from a slow motion gun, the last thing I saw before he crashed into me his wide, terrified eyes.

There was a flash of pain, and then darkness, as I was enveloped by the cold, sweet embrace of death… Or I would've been if I were dead, but I was not, simply unconscious, which is sort of like being dead, except that you eventually wake up from it, whereas if you're dead, you can't, unless you're revived by magic or have an extra life or something, I dunno.

…

"And that's the story of how we became detectives!" Vector finished.

Everyone stared at him. "THAT-WAS-STUPID," Omega said finally.

Shadow snorted. "Well, what do you expect from those three clowns?"

"Come on, it wasn't that bad!" Vector said defensively.

"No offense, Vector, but… It kind of was," Tails said.

"Okay, now I think I really AM starting to blame myself for how they turned out," Knuckles said guiltily.

"As well you should," Sonic said angrily.

"I think I begin to understand why we don't have film noir in the FYOO-CHURR," Silver said.

"Well, at least Cream liked it, right?" Charmy asked his crush hopefully.

The rabbit fidgeted. "Well, um… I'm happy that Mr. Vector seemed happy telling it…"

"I think that means she hated it," Espio said as Charmy's face fell.

"Well, HATE is a very strong word," Cream said meekly.

"While I am not myself a detective, I'm fairly certain that there's a lot more involved in becoming one than just one day, deciding that you will be one," Blaze said.

Rouge nodded. "Yes, you need to take some tests, get a license or two, get the right education, spend money in the right places…"

"Yeah, but we didn't have enough cash for any of that stuff, so we just took an online exam, printed out the certificate, and then grabbed an office in a condemned building and used posters and word-of-mouth to advertise since we couldn't afford to put anything in the paper," Vector said.

"Just how poor are you?" Asked a disturbed Amy.

"When we pass homeless people on the street, they look down on us," Espio deadpanned.

"Oh come on, it's not that bad! They only spit at us some of the time…" Vector said weakly.

Sonic rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. "Would, uh, would you guys like some cash?"

Vector folded his arms firmly. "We don't take charity."

"Don't listen to him! We need as much money as we can get our hands on!" Espio said desperately.

"Yeah, if we don't pay off our debts soon, a shark's going to EAT me!" Charmy said.

"A shark?" asked a confused Silver.

"Long story," Vector said.

"Tails?" Sonic asked, glancing at his friend.

The fox sighed resignedly. "All right, I'll write them a check later."

"Score!" Charmy cheered as Vector scowled.

"You have enough money to pay off our debts?" Espio asked doubtfully.

"Considering all the patents I've developed and royalties I collect regularly, I think it's safe to say I'm kind of loaded," Tails said smugly.

"He certainly gets more on a regular basis than I do!" Sonic joked.

"Really? I was…Not aware of that," Rouge said, looking intrigued.

"I don't have any jewels," Tails said cautiously.

The bat pouted. "Well, that's a bit of a turnoff… But I'm sure I could work around it…" Tails gulped.

"Were you ever able to find Mighty?" Silver asked.

Vector sighed and shook his head. "Sadly, no. We looked high and low for months, years! We solved many mysteries, caught lots of criminals, beat lots of bad guys… But in all that time, we haven't seen hide nor hair of Mighty."

Everyone stared at him, glanced at something behind the crocodile, and then looked at him again. "Seriously?" Shadow said incredulously.

Vector nodded. "Yeah, it's like he vanished off the face of the Earth or something! When the Black Arms invaded, we thought we cut a lucky break and maybe they took him as a prelude to their attack, but no, they didn't have him either." He sighed wearily. "There are times I worry that will never find him…That he might be dead, or worse…But just as Mighty would never give up on us, I won't give up on him! I just know he's out there, somewhere, and someday, I'll find him!"

"I'm right here, you idiot!"

Vector sniffed. "Some days, I can swear it almost sounds like I can still hear his voice…"

"That's because it IS my voice! I'm right behind you!"

Vector started to cry. "Yes Mighty, I know you're behind me…pushing me forward, encouraging me to keep going, giving me the strength to persevere and never give up!"

"No, I mean I'm LITERALLY right behind you, you idiot!"

Vector began to openly bawl. "Thank you for always having my back, Mighty! I know I'm a terrible friend and an awful detective, and I'm sorry I keep letting you down!"

"Ugh, why do I even bother…" Mighty the Armadillo, who was indeed standing right behind the weeping Vector, grumbled.

The others stared awkwardly at each other for a moment. "…Is he blind or stupid? That's clearly Mighty right behind him!" Blaze hissed. "I am not the only one who sees this, yes?"

"No, I see it too," Knuckles said.

"We've actually known he was there for a while now, but we never said anything because Vector never brought it up, so we figured he must've known," Tails said, looking embarrassed.

"Which, in retrospect, might not have been the best idea, knowing Vector," Rouge said.

"Huh? What are you guys talking about?" Vector asked in confusion.

"Mr. Vector, Mighty's right behind you," Cream said.

Vector nodded sagely. "Yes, Cream, I know, he's behind me in spirit!"

"Well, yeah, but he's also there in person," Amy said. "If you look over your shoulder, you'll see him."

Vector glanced over his shoulder at Mighty, who waved at him frantically. Vector shook his head sadly and turned around again. "Oh, that's not Mighty, that's just a manifestation of my subconscious guilt over how I haven't found him yet, despite looking for ages and ages, a constant reminder of my failures as a detective."

Just about everyone facepalmed. "Unbelievable…" Shadow groaned.

"WHAT-AN-IDIOT," Omega said.

"Exactly how has he managed to solve any cases again?" Asked an incredulous Sonic.

"Largely with our help," Espio said.

"Vector," Tails said slowly and carefully, as if to a very stupid child. "If that's a manifestation of YOUR subconscious guilt, then how come all of us can see him?"

"Well, that's because…uh…" Vector paused for a very long time as the gears in his head slowly ground together towards the inevitable, albeit long put off, solution. "Wait…But if you all can see him, then…That means…MIGHTY!" He wrapped his arms around the armadillo in a hug and started sobbing uncontrollably. "I found you! After all these years, I've finally found you!"

"No, you haven't, you moron!" Mighty snapped, shoving Vector away from him. "I've been right behind you for ages, but you were too stupid to notice!"

"Well, why didn't you say something?!" Vector demanded.

"I DID! You just kept thinking I was a manifestation of your subconscious or something stupid like that!" Mighty shouted angrily.

"Well…uh…" Vector stammered, before whirling on his teammates. "Well, why didn't YOU chuckleheads say something?!"

"I was curious to see how long it would take you to figure it out yourself," Espio said. "And when you DIDN'T figure it out for yourself, it just felt awkward, and I was never sure when the right time to point it out would be without making you look like a bigger fool or me like a jerk."

"Plus, he didn't want to lose our bet!" Charmy chirped.

"That too," Espio admitted.

"You guys bet on how long it would take Vector to notice me instead of actually pointing it out?!" Mighty demanded. "God, you guys are assholes! I don't know why I ever thought we were friends! And speaking of which…" He glared angrily at the others. "Why didn't you jerks say something before now?!"

"We, um, didn't know that Vector didn't know you were there?" Sonic said weakly, well aware it wasn't a very good excuse.

"And we didn't want to be rude or embarrass ourselves by pointing it out and finding out that he was aware of it all long," Amy said.

"Or we just didn't care," Shadow said flatly.

"And I think there was usually some incredibly inconvenient distraction every time we were about to talk to or acknowledge you, as if the universe were conspiring to prevent it from happening until now," Tails said.

"I always assumed you were a manifestation of MY guilt or a ghost or something, trying to punish me for kicking the Chaotix off the island in the first place, so remained silent out of hopes that if I pretended you weren't there, you'd go away," Knuckles admitted. Everyone looked him. "What? Ghosts exist! It could happen!"

"I hate every last one of you and am beginning to understand why the others saw the appeal of turning evil," Mighty growled.

"Would a chili dog help?" Sonic asked hopefully, offering his old friend one of the snacks. "You used to love them just as much as any South Islander!"

The armadillo glared at the blue hedgehog in front of him, then at the chili dog, his expression faltering. "Well… While North-by-Northwestopolis has a lot of good stuff, great chili dogs were never one of them…" Hesitantly, he took the chili dog and bit into it. He chewed for a moment, a thoughtful look on his face…

Before he started bursting into tears. "Oh God, it's so good!" He wailed, greedily shoving the rest of the chili dog into his mouth and snatching more from a nearby table. "It's been so long since I've had a really good one, I'd almost forgotten what they tasted like! Oh God, it feels like home! I can't believe how much I missed this, and South Island, and EVERYTHING! Oh, Sonic, I should never have left!"

"Hey, buddy, it's okay," Sonic said, hugging his friend while everyone else fidgeted awkwardly. "You wanted to get out from under my shadow, make a name for yourself away from home. There's nothing wrong with that."

"But I screwed up, Sonic! I screwed up big time!" Mighty cried miserably. "I made a mess of my life, and the lives of those who looked to me for guidance! I'm no hero, I'm a failure!"

"Now, that is just not true!" Sonic said firmly. "Okay, you may have taken a few missteps, but that doesn't mean you're a failure! After all, if we don't make a few mistakes now and then, how can we ever learn to become better than we are now? Heck, you'd be surprised at some of the stupid things I've done over the years which I've tried my hardest to keep out of the public eye!"

"Like what?" Mighty asked.

"I once went out on a date with Amy, just to see what it would be like," Sonic said. "Biiiiiiiiiig mistake."

"Hey!" Amy exclaimed.

"Oh, wow, that really is a big mistake," said the surprised Mighty. "Whatever made you think something like that would be a good idea?"

Sonic sighed. "I felt sorry for constantly rebuffing her advances and running out on her. I shouldn't have. I _really_ shouldn't have. I've fought all sorts of robots and monsters and cosmic and alien horrors––oh, and Eggman, I guess––but I can honestly tell you that date was one of the most horrible things I've ever experienced in my entire life."

"You poor thing," Mighty said sympathetically.

Amy's eye twitched. "Oh, come on! It wasn't that bad!"

"It kind of was," Tails said.

"You weren't even there!" Amy argued.

"Yes, I was, in disguise," Tails affirmed. "Sonic asked me to be his wingman to make sure you didn't try anything weird, and to get him out of there in case of emergency."

Amy stared at him in shock and anger. "I _thought_ that waiter looked familiar…"

"My point is, even heroes can mess up sometimes," Sonic continued. "Sometimes we screw up big time, but that doesn't mean we should just give up when the going gets tough, now does it?"

Mighty considered this for a moment, then shook his head, a smile slowly returning to his face. It looked good, like he hadn't smiled in a very long time, which he probably hadn't. "No…No, it doesn't! You're right, Sonic! Even though my life for the last few years has been one horrible mess after another, I'm not going to let it get me down! I WILL be a hero, one just as good as you, if not even better someday! And plus, you're right, it's not all my fault this happened, if Knuckles hadn't kicked us off Angel Island in the first place, we'd never have been in a position to get trounced by Fang!"

"Yeah, this is all on you, Knuckles!" Charmy jeered.

"For the last time, you BROKE THE MASTER EMERALD TEN TIMES!" Knuckles shouted.

"But Mr. Knuckles, didn't you once mention that you accidentally broke the Master Emerald 40 times in one day?" Cream asked.

Knuckles blushed as everyone stared at him in disbelief. "Th-that was told in extreme confidence! And there were extenuating circumstances!" He cried shrilly.

"Unbelievable! You kicked us off for breaking your stupid Emerald 10 times, but you break it nearly as often in a single day?!" Espio said incredulously.

"Hypocrite!" Charmy yelled.

"It's different when I do it!" Knuckles protested lamely. Nobody bought it.

"Knuckles, considering how often that Emerald of yours gets broken or stolen, I have to say, you must be the worst Guardian of a magical artifact I've ever heard of," Shadow said.

"Hell, it might actually be safer in my care, and I'm a jewel thief!" Rouge agreed.

"Seriously, Knuckles, how the heck did YOU wind up with the responsibility of guarding that thing in the first place?" Sonic asked.

"Well, um–" Knuckles started.

"That can wait, we're still dealing with the Chaotix's history," Silver interjected, much to Knuckles' relief. "But make no mistake, Knuckles, your turn will come soon wnough, and we will know the truth!" The red echidna gulped nervously.

"So Mighty, does that mean you're going to rejoin the team and become our leader once more?" Charmy asked hopefully.

"And that we don't get to be detectives anymore?" Vector asked in disappointment.

"What? Hell no! Screw you guys, you ignored me for a couple of years now! I'm sick of putting up with your shenanigans, I'm going back home to South Island to put my life back in order and figure out my next step, and you'd better hope I NEVER see you again!" Mighty said angrily.

"You're leaving?! But you promised us you would never leave!" Charmy protested.

"That was before you ignored me, either out of petty malice or sheer stupidity, for YEARS!" Mighty snapped. "At least the others were just being polite and didn't have a clue was going on, I can forgive them for that, but you guys did it because you're either stupid or because of a dumb BET!"

The Chaotix sagged. "Yeah, that's fair," Espio said glumly.

"I guess it's what we deserve…" Charmy said unhappily.

"But Mighty, before you leave us forever… Can't you please tell us what happened to you, all those years ago?" Vector pleaded. "It's the one mystery I've never been able to solve––well, other than how to win Vanilla's heart, and how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll––and even though I know you must hate me more than anything else, please, PLEASE tell me what happened!"

Mighty considered this for a moment. "I should say no," he said bitterly. "I should deny you this one last shred of satisfaction and solace, after ignoring me for so long…But I suppose I owe it to the others, to my _real_ friends, to tell them what happened, if not you."

"Oh, thank you, Mighty! Thank you!" Vector said in relief.

"I'm not doing it for YOU," Mighty said scornfully. "I'm doing it so people I actually CARE about can know what happened. The fact that you just happen to be around to hear it too is purely incidental." Turning his back on the distraught crocodile, Mighty said, "So, here's what happened. I'd just completed a session with *shudder* Mr. Carruthers, called the agency to report it in and let Vector know I was on my way home, and just as I was crossing the street, I got hit by a GUN Military Truck."

Everyone gasped. "Seriously?! Ugh, those things are the WORST!" Sonic complained. "Especially after they got upgraded with rocket boosters, missiles, and buzzsaws… I swear, I don't know what gives me more nightmares, those things, or _whales_ …"

"What about GUN trucks being driven by whales?" Knuckles suggested.

Sonic stared off into the distance for a long moment before finally saying, "Gee, thanks Knux, now I'll never be able to sleep again."

Blaze nodded solemnly. "Yes, truly whales are a foul plague upon both our worlds. It's why I've ordered all whales on my world to be exterminated on sight, something which Fleet Admiral Marine takes great pleasure in enforcing."

"That's horrible!" Said the aghast Cream.

"How could you do something so vile?!" Amy demanded in disgust.

"YOU-WISH-TO-ERADICATE-AN-ENTIRE-SPECIES? I-AM-SO-TURNED-ON-RIGHT-NOW," Omega said.

"Aren't you already turned on, because you aren't deactivated or in sleep mode or something?" Cream asked innocently.

"I-AM-THAT-AS-WELL," Omega conceded.

"I have literally never met a single whale that has not tried to kill me. I think it's justified," Blaze said.

Sonic nodded. "Yeah, I'm kind of with her on this. Just about every time I've gone to the beach whales have tried to kill me, and the first time I went to her world, we got attacked by a whale controlled by an evil robot pirate and I had to let it eat me three times so I could smash its heart until it died. It also froze a bunch of Vikings. I think the world would be a better place without creatures like that in them."

"To be fair, the whale was a robot too," Tails said. He frowned. "Or a ghost… Or a robot ghost? Is that possible?"

"I don't see why not," Sonic said. "After all, we've encountered robots, and we've encountered ghosts, so why not robot ghosts? Seems plausible to me."

"Don't you need a soul to leave a ghost?" Amy asked skeptically.

"ARE-YOU-SAYING-I-DON'T-HAVE-A-SOUL?" Omega asked threateningly.

Amy paled. "Ah, no. No, Omega, that's not what I was insinuating it all. I'm sure you have a soul."

"Actually, how could we tell?" Tails wondered, intrigued by the philosophical implications.

"I read somewhere that if you're smart enough to question if you have a soul, you probably have one," Rouge said.

Shadow smirked. "How poetic."

"But Orbot and Cubot don't have souls," Knuckles argued. "Eggman said so himself."

"One, do you really want to trust a guy like Eggman on the topic of souls?" Shadow said. "And two, I would hardly call Orbot and Cubot 'intelligent.'"

"Yeah, I think my plane is smarter than those two, and it doesn't even have an AI!" Tails said. "Well, not yet, anyway…"

"This is true," Knuckles conceded.

"Why does GUN use those giant trucks, anyway?" Espio wondered, bringing them back on topic. "They're massively impractical and cause a ridiculous amount of property damage while chasing down whomever or whatever they're dispatched to capture."

"GUN Commander loves trucks," Rouge said.

Shadow nodded. "When he was a little kid, he wanted to be a truck driver when he grew up. Or a truck himself. He wasn't picky. I wonder if part of the reason he's such an asshole is because he never got to fulfill his childhood dream… No, wait, he was an asshole when he was a little kid, too. Never mind."

"Why was a GUN truck there in the first place? And why did it hit you?" Sonic asked.

"You looked both ways before crossing the street, didn't you? Mother says that's always important," Cream said.

"I'll bet he saw some little kid playing in the street, utterly oblivious of the giant motorized death machine hurtling towards him, and Mighty valiantly ran out into the middle of the street and pushed the kid out of the way, taking the blow for himself!" Vector said.

"Yeah, that sounds like something he'd do!" Charmy agreed.

"Actually, it hit me on purpose," Mighty said. "This happened during the whole Space Colony ARK thing, back when everyone was convinced Sonic was going around stealing Chaos Emeralds instead of Shadow, and the truck driver thought that I was Sonic because _apparently_ armadillos and hedgehogs are completely indistinct from each other, so tried to run me down."

Everyone facepalmed. "The horrible thing is, I can completely believe that," Tails said wearily.

"And these are the people we're trusting to protect our freedom and safety?!" Amy said in disbelief.

"I thought WE were the people we trusted to protect our freedom and safety," Knuckles said.

"I know, and we wouldn't have to if these idiots actually did their jobs right!" Amy said angrily.

"Okay, I'm getting sick and tired of GUN doing shit like this all the time," Sonic said angrily. "I know they're allegedly trying to do the right thing, but I'm starting to think their organization needs some serious retooling!"

"Or at the very least, the ability to tell Mobians apart from each other," Shadow agreed. "You and the armadillo look NOTHING like me. For example, I have much better hair."

"Don't worry, once I've accomplished everything I set out to do when I joined GUN, I promise you they won't be doing anything like this ever again," Rouge said.

"Why DID you join GUN, anyway?" Espio asked suspiciously.

The beautiful thief/spy smirked. "Well, you'll have to wait until it's my turn to find that out, now, won't you?"

"Thanks to my tough shell, I wasn't killed, but I wound up in a coma," Mighty said. "The driver freaked out when he realized that I wasn't Sonic-which should have been obvious, really, considering that I'm NOT EVEN A HEDGEHOG-and rushed me to the hospital. My phone got broken in the accident, and Mr. Carruthers must've swiped my wallet or something when I left his place, so I'd have an excuse to come back and spend more *shudder* time with him, so they had no way to ID me or call the others to let them know where I was. They labeled me a John Doe and shoved me in some back room to be forgotten, which was really to GUN's benefit, because it would mean one less lawsuit for them from someone who'd gotten attacked by their soldiers by mistake in their overzealous attempts to catch Sonic." He smiled grimly. "Oh, but trust me, once I can find a good lawyer, I'm going to squeeze every last Ring I can get from them for doing that to me."

"We'll help," Sonic promised coldly. Tails nodded in agreement.

"As will we," Rouge said, glancing at Shadow and Omega, who nodded. "Of course, we'll have to do so discreetly, since we work for GUN, which means we can't be seen openly helping you with something like this, but…Don't worry, we won't let them get away with this."

Mighty smirked. "Thanks, guys. Good to know you can be counted on more than the three I THOUGHT were my friends." The Chaotix flinched. "Anyway, despite being in a coma, I was far from inactive. While my body lay there, inert, my mind found itself summoned to the dreamscape of Maginaryworld by its ruler, Illumina, Goddess of Dreams."

"Ooh, that sounds marvelous!" Cream squealed.

"That's… Nice," Shadow said awkwardly, judiciously deciding not to comment on how it was quite possible that Mighty might have suffered brain damage from being in a coma for so long.

"Oh wow, Maginaryworld! I haven't been there in ages!" Amy gushed.

"Yeah, I'd almost forgotten about that adventure!" Tails agreed.

Shadow blinked. "Wait, you know what he's talking about?"

Sonic nodded. "Yeah, a few years ago, right after the Chaos incident in Station Square, me, Tails, Amy, Knuckles, E–102 Gamma, a random Chao, and Big all got summoned to Maginaryworld to save it from being destroyed at the hands of a sad, lonely being named Void by defeating him and his minions in a series of board games."

"…Board games," Shadow said flatly.

"Yep!" Sonic said.

"Why…Why would you play games?" Asked the bewildered black hedgehog.

Tails shrugged. "It was a dream world; you expect it to make sense?"

"…Fair point," Shadow admitted.

"So you've been there, too? They _did_ mention it, but…hmm, well that's a good sign, then," Mighty murmured to himself.

"MY-BROTHER-GAMMA-WAS-THERE?" Omega asked in interest.

"Yeah! It was great seeing him again…" Amy said with a fond smile. She frowned. "…Though I'm not entirely sure how he got there in the first place, considering that he kind of sort of _died_ fighting his brother Beta. Unless it was the bird who was REALLY Gamma dreaming about being a robot again? Does that make any sense?"

"It makes as much sense as anything else involving an adventure in a dream world," Tails said.

"Hey, Omega, have you ever dreamed? I think if you can dream, it might be a sign that you have a soul…or something," Vector said.

"I-AM-UNCERTAIN," Omega said. "WHEN-I-AM-DEACTIVATED, I-EXPERIENCE-NOTHING. AT-LEAST-NOTHING-I-AM-AWARE-OF. WHEN-I-AM-IN-SLEEP-MODE, THOUGH…HMM. THIS-WARRANTS-FURTHER-STUDY."

"Maginaryworld…Illumina…those names sound familiar…" Cream murmured. "I think I might have been there a few times in my dreams. Cheese, too."

"Chao, Chao!" Cheese agreed.

Blaze smirked. "A pure, sweet, innocent girl like yourself? It wouldn't surprise me if you went there every night." Cream blushed.

"Eggman was there, too," Knuckles recalled. "I don't think he did anything substantive, though."

"Like that's new," Sonic joked. "Hey, Knux, didn't you have a crush on that Lumina Flowlight girl?"

Rouge raised an eyebrow in amusement as the echidna flushed. "Oh? Should I be concerned that there's another woman, Knuckles?"

"I–it was a long time ago!" Knuckles spluttered. "And besides, it, it would never have worked out, anyway! Not only were we from two different worlds, but it turned out at the end that she and Void were actually two halves of the same person—Illumina-and fused together once we'd saved the day. It was kind of weird, actually." He shrugged. "But then again, what would you expect from a dream?"

"So, how was Maginaryworld doing?" Sonic asked.

"Not good," Mighty said. "Illumina had summoned me because there was a war between her world and another dream realm called Nightopia, instigated by the evil Wizeman the Wicked, Lord of the Nightmaren and God of Nightmares. He wanted to claim the power of the Precioustone so that he could use its energies to break through into our world and envelop the planet in an eternal nightmare."

"Wizeman?! Ugh, that dick! That sounds just like him!" Sonics swore. "What about NiGHTS? Was s/he there?"

"Who is NiGHTS?" Asked the very confused Vector.

"A hermaphrodite jester and reformed Nightmaren who fights hir former master and brethren to protect dreamers everywhere from nightmares," Sonic explained. "We've crossed paths a few times, most recently when I had a nightmare on Lost Hex and battled dream versions of the Deadly Six alongside some of Wizeman's most powerful minions, but NiGHTS was able to defeat hir sibling Reala, who'd drawn me into the nightmare in the first place, allowing me to wake up."

"…Ah," Vector said vaguely.

Shadow shook his head. "Of COURSE you've had adventures in multiple dream worlds. Only you could, Sonic. I don't know why this sort of thing surprises me anymore."

"Wait, there's more than one dream world?" Asked the confused Charmy.

"I don't see why not. After all, it's not like there's just one dreamer in the world, right?" Tails said reasonably.

"Then are there as many dream worlds as there are dreamers?" Amy wondered.

"It certainly started to feel like it after a while," Mighty commented. "Anyway, yeah, NiGHTS was there. S/he'd managed to escape from Wizeman's clutches to warn Illumina, and she asked the two of us to team up to help stop the war and save both worlds."

"Did the two of you have to fuse? I had to do that one time, it was kinda weird," Sonic said.

Mighty grimaced. "Yeah, it felt pretty unusual…On the other hand, being able to fly around and make loops around bad guys was pretty cool, if a little dizzying."

"Why did you have to fuse?" Asked a lost Rouge.

"NiGHTS is pretty strong on hir own, but is far more powerful when 'dualizing' with a dreamer," Sonic explained.

"It also allows hir to escape from cages, which… s/he gets stuck in a lot for some reason," Mighty said with a frown. "Anyway, together we battled all sorts of horrible Nightmaren, but just when it started looking as if we were making headway and might win the war, we suddenly got invaded by nightmares from ANOTHER dream world called Phantomile, led by some jackass named Ghadeon who claimed to be the true King of nightmares, and we wound up having to partner up with this strange rabbit-like thing called Klonoa who could pick up and throw things with his ears and a magic ring."

Sonic blinked. "…Okay, that's a new one on me," he confessed. "Never been there or met that guy, though something about a rabbit who can throw stuff with his ears seems vaguely familiar."

"Okay, now that _does_ surprise me," Shadow said. The others nodded in agreement.

"And then things got REALLY crazy when the barriers between dream worlds started breaking down and all sorts of nightmares and bad guys and monsters from other dreams started attacking too, and we had to team up with the heroes of THOSE worlds," Mighty continued. "And they were pretty weird, too. There was that mute kid in green with a sword…That pink puffball that kept trying to eat everything, including me…A guy who didn't have any limbs and could fly using his hair…Two kids wielding giant keys commanding an army of friendly nightmares…Adorable but incredibly powerful creatures who could only say their names for some reason…a psychic kid with goggles…some sort of living sack doll…Yeah, it got pretty wild."

"Sounds it," said an impressed, but somewhat disturbed Tails.

"I've met a couple of those guys at the Smash Brothers tournament, but I've never heard of most of them," Sonic admitted.

"And then, of course, it turned out the whole thing was being orchestrated by an even greater evil –" Mighty started.

"Well, yeah, obviously!" Sonic said.

"Isn't it always?" Amy said, rolling her eyes.

"Been there, done that," Blaze said.

"It was all the work of some creepy-ass guy called Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, who brought all these nightmares together to create a bad dream so big and nasty it would shock an Eldritch Abomination named Cthulhu from his deathlike slumber so that he would destroy the world," Mighty continued. "And the psychic backlash from his awakening would be so great that it would also kill everyone dreaming those dream realms into existence as an added bonus."

It said something about the level of ridiculous, insane, and horrific stuff that he encountered on a regular basis that Sonic's only reaction to this was, "Huh."

"Quite ambitious," Shadow quipped

"That's not very nice of him," Cream said. "Why would he want to do that?"

"Because he's evil and insane, I guess," Mighty said. "Anyway, we managed to defeat him AND the giant super-nightmare he created from fusing all the other bad guys together, but the damage was done and Cthulhu started waking up, so we had to defeat the avatar of his dreaming self by gathering the superpowered items of all the dream worlds and combining their powers to create a lullaby strong enough to put him back to sleep until his destined time of awakening, saving the world from his wrath… For now."

"Eh, I'm not worried," Sonic said with a shrug. "If he wakes up anytime soon, we'll just put him back to sleep again."

"Do you think you can?" Knuckles asked doubtfully. "I think I've seen a few legends of Cthulhu in the ruins on Angel Island. He sounds pretty nasty, even for us."

"Knux, I've defeated a giant monster that sleeps within the center of the planet for millions of years at a time and has the power to literally shatter the world. I utterly demolished a monster capable of eating TIME itself. I think I can handle a big green thing with a squid for a face," Sonic said casually.

"Didn't you have help both those times?" Tails pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but I didn't say I'd be fighting it ALONE," Sonic said. "I mean, if something like that pops up, I figured we'd all work together to fight it, if it came to that."

Shadow smirked. "Fighting Cthulhu? Sure, why not? Fighting Devil Doom and some of the other things we've beaten probably makes for good practice…"

"And besides, Silver's time exists, which means if any giant ancient sleeping evils awaken in the near future, that means we MUST beat them, and anything else that threatens the world, or else he wouldn't even be alive," Rouge pointed out.

Silver nodded. "That's right, but don't think that means you can slack off on the job. After all, the FYOO-CHURR _can_ be changed, otherwise I wouldn't even have to come here all the time!"

"So what happened next?" Cream asked Mighty.

"Well, with Nyarlyathotep and Cthulhu dealt with, the dream worlds started to go back to normal, and everyone had to return to their own realms," Mighty explained. "We said our goodbyes, and I woke up." He made a face. "Unfortunately, I wound up waking up in time for the whole Dark Gaia thing to occur, so it took a while for me to realize that I hadn't somehow screwed up, and that Cthulhu had not, in fact, woken up after all and destroyed the world. I was rather miffed to learn that it was some completely unrelated other sleeping ancient cosmic horror instead. Kind of made me wonder what the point of all that was if the world was nearly destroyed by another monster older than time, anyway. Like Nyarlyathotep needn't have bothered in the first place."

"Well, that's kind of the problem in our line of work. You save the world, but it doesn't STAY saved," Sonic said. "Well, at least it keep things interesting!"

"And the average citizen in a near constant state of dread that their world could be destroyed at any moment," Blaze said.

"That too," Sonic said.

"I eventually managed to find my way back to the others, where they proceeded to ignore me for the next few years," Mighty said coldly, causing his former friends to whence. "For a while I thought I might actually be DEAD or something, or that Nyarlyathotep had cursed me to make me somehow unnoticeable or unmemorable or something as one last big 'fuck you' for stopping him, given that Vector acted like he was the only person to see me, but treated me as if I were a ghost or something anyway. Not cool, guys. Not cool."

"Um… We're sorry?" Charmy said weakly.

"Too little, too late," Mighty said grimly.

"Well…Look at the bright side!" Amy said, trying to break the mood. "You got to be a hero after all!"

"Hey, yeah! You were!" Sonic realized. "You saved a bunch of dream worlds, real worlds, and lots of people in either reality! Nice job, pal!"

"Huh…Yeah, I guess I did, didn't I?" Mighty realized, face lighting up.

"If you did all that, then why were you even questioning whether or not you were good enough in the first place, just a minute ago?" Knuckles asked.

"Well, Knux, all that happened in a dream while I was in a coma. It's kind of understandable why, sometime after the fact, I might not exactly be certain that any of it ever happened at all," Mighty said. "Plus I was kind of in a bad mode due to being ignored for years. But since Sonic and some of you guys recognized the names and places I mentioned, that means that my dream adventures really happened after all. Good to know I'm not crazy."

"Yeah, that's always a good feeling," Rouge said.

"Though given the sort of thing we do regularly, I'm not sure 'sane' is something that can be applied to any of us," Shadow quipped.

"And that's my story," Mighty concluded.

"Well, thanks for telling it, buddy!" Sonic said, clapping a hand on his old friend's shoulder. "It's good to finally know where you've been all this time, and why you were standing behind Vector being more or less unnoticed by everyone. I know you must be raring to head back home to South Island to try and start things over and distance yourself from the Chaotix, but do you think you could hang out a little longer, at least until the party's over? It'd be good to catch up with you, after all this time."

Mighty smirked and smacked Sonic on the back so hard he was nearly faceplanted into the ground. "Sure thing! Anything for a REAL FRIEND."

Vector flinched. "That's gonna be hanging over us for a very long time, isn't it?"

"Yep," Espio said.

"We're terrible people," Charmy said sadly.

"Thank you for that series of stories, Team Chaotix. They were very…Illuminating, as well as traumatizing," Silver said. "And with that out of the way, I think it's time we move on the next tale. How about…You, Knuckles? After all, at one point you were a member of the Chaotix as well, and hearing your story would give us the last origin from a member of Team Sonic. It would help bring a sense of closure for both teams."

Knuckles grimaced. "I never agreed to that name, you know…I still think it should have been called Team Knuckles…"

"You are possibly the only person in the entire world who feels that way," Shadow said. Everyone nodded in agreement. Knuckles scowled.

"Okay, get it over with," the echidna grunted. He was pretty sure he knew what was coming. There wasn't much else it could possibly be.

"All right, Knuckles. This question should be easy…" Silver said. " **How did you become the Guardian of the Master Emerald?"**

…

And with that, another origin is done! Wow, that one took a bit longer to complete than I expected. Hope you enjoyed it, though!

Next time, we hear Knuckles' origin, told both by our favorite echidna and a surprise guest star. Before that, however, it's time to choose whose origin will go after Knuckles. Who will it be? **Rouge, Cream, Big, the Babylon Rogues, Shade** , or **Sticks?** (Or Blaze, possibly?) And again, if there are any others you would like to hear an origin from, please let me know and I will consider it.


	5. Knuckles' Genealogy

Welcome back! Hopefully the super-long chapter last time didn't turn you off…because unfortunately this one's even longer. Sorry. I don't know how it happened, either…I guess this is just what happens whenever I write something. Oh well.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.

…

"How I became Guardian of the Master Emerald, eh?" Knuckles said thoughtfully. He sighed. "Well, I figured somebody was going to ask me that question sooner or later. It's quite the story, and a rather tragic one at that…"

"In other words, it's going to be totally lame," Charmy translated.

"It is _not_ going to be lame! YOU'RE lame! Shut up!" Knuckles snapped childishly.

"Wow, nice comeback," the bee deadpanned, not impressed.

"Tragic? But Knuckles, I thought–" Sonic started.

"It all began many years ago, on the distant planet of Zircon…" Knuckles began.

"Zir-what now?" Tails asked in disbelief.

"Isn't Zircon what fake diamonds are made of?" Amy asked.

"Yes, but they're more than just a cheap diamond substitute, they can sometimes be valuable gemstones in their own right," said Rouge, who would know.

"A distant planet? I didn't know you were an alien, Mr. Knuckles," said the surprised Cream.

"That's because he's not," Shadow said with a sigh.

"Yep, totally lame. This is gonna suck," Charmy said as the air wavered.

…

In a dome-shaped chamber constructed of glittering crystal, strange machines of incomprehensible purpose and function lining the walls and rising like great monoliths of science and technology from the floor, a beautiful female echidna in a shimmering silver robe paced anxiously around the base of an ovoid capsule that seem to be equal parts crystal and metal pointed upwards at a closed hatch on the ceiling next to a dangling stuffed alligator, various power cables leading away from the harness cradling the device to the myriad machines around the room. As she chewed her lip wqorriedly, the small red echidna puggle she was carrying in her arms, swaddled in a blanket, started crying, as if picking up on her distress. "Sssh, there, there," she crooned, gently rocking the baby. "Don't worry, little Knuck-El, your father will be back soon." The floor trembled, and several of the machines started making ominous sounds. "I just hope he'll be back in time…" She said nervously.

The door to the chamber irised open, and a handsome, rugged, very intelligent-looking white-furred echidna in black and green armor rushed into the room, holding a giant green brilliant-cut gemstone at least half again as big as he was over his head. "Lara, I have returned! Hurry, shut the door, Zod will be here at any moment, and he mustn't interfere before we're through!" he said in a voice oddly reminiscent of Marlon Brando.

The female, Lara quickly pressed a button on a nearby console, and the door sealed shut behind her husband. "You have it, then? The Master Emerald?"

The male echidna nodded. "The single most valuable artifact on the planet, possessing limitless power and containing all the collected wisdom, knowledge, and history of our entire species? It was not easy, but yes, I was able to retrieve it, as you well can see! Is the escape craft ready?"

Lara nodded. "Yes, I followed all your instructions. The ship is fueled, the trajectory is set, all we need to do is load the cargo and we can send it on its way." She frowned. "Though I still don't understand why you couldn't have built a ship large enough for all of us…"

"I told you, Lara, there wasn't any time!" The male echidna, Jor-El, said as he rushed over, opened the capsule, and gently placed the Master Emerald inside. "I only had enough time to build a ship large enough to transport our son and the Master Emerald to safety! If there had been any more time, I would've made it large enough for us as well!"

"I seem to recall you spending six weeks after the Council rejected your claims that the planet was going to explode drinking yourself into a stupor before I suggested that maybe we find a way off Zircon before it was destroyed," Lara said skeptically. "Plus, I'm pretty sure that both of us could fit in there if we left the Master Emerald behind. It'd be a tight squeeze, but–"

"We can't leave the Master Emerald behind, Lara! Our son can use its power and knowledge to one day establish a new echidna civilization on another planet, which would be very difficult for us to do if just the three of us went! Which is more important, Lara: our lives, or the future of our entire species?" Jor-El insisted.

"I actually wouldn't mind living, if it's all the same to you," Lara muttered to herself. Jor-EL steadfastly ignored her.

There was a banging on the door. "Jor-El! This is General Zod! By the order of the High Council, you're under arrest for stealing the Master Emerald, frightening the populace with claims that our entire species is doomed, and generally making a nuisance of yourself! Open the door at once, and turn yourself in, or we will bring you in by force!" A voice shouted from the other side.

"Never!" Jor-El shouted. "Quickly, Lara, that door won't hold him for long!"

Lara kissed Knuck-El on the forehead, hugged him tightly, and gently placed him in the capsule beside the Master Emerald, sniffing and trying her hardest not to cry. "Goodbye, little one. Have a pleasant flight. I hope the world you arrive on will be better than the one you're leaving."

"Well, it won't be without its share of problems," Jor-El admitted. "But I have faith that he shall not only survive, but thrive." He leaned into the capsule, meeting his son's wide eyes, a deep look of affection and love on his face. "My son, at first the people of this new world may not understand you, may even fear you…but do not allow yourself to fall into despair. You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you. They will stumble. They will fall. But in time, they will join you in the Sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders." He smiled. "You will travel far, my little Knuck-El. But we will never leave you... even in the face of our death. The richness of our lives shall be yours. All that I have, all that I've learned, everything I feel... all this, and more, I... I bequeath you, my son. You will carry me inside you, all the days of your life. You will make my strength your own, and see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father, and the father the son. This is all I... all I can send you, Knuck-El. Well, that and a copy of my consciousness, since I was able to imprint my memory engrams into the Master Emerald on the way here, so you can ask me for help whenever you need guidance."

Lara blinked. "Wait, what? You can do that? Why didn't you do that for me, too, so I can–"

"There's no time!" Jor-El insisted, closing the capsule.

"I think there would have been," she grumbled as her husband pressed a series of buttons on a nearby console. As the capsule began to power up, the hatch on the ceiling opened up, revealing a starry sky.

Suddenly, there was a great explosion as the door was blasted open. As the smoke cleared, over a dozen black-armored echidnas carrying energy weapons raced into the room, followed by the imposing figure of General Zod, leader of planet Zircon's military, flanked by his subordinates Ursa and Non. "Jor-El!" the fearsome-looking black echidna bellowed. "Whatever you're doing, stop it right now! Return the Master Emerald immediately!"

"You're too late, Zod!" Jor-El declared, pushing one last button on his console. With a great roar, the capsule rocketed off its cradle and shot through the ceiling hatch, flying off into space. "The Master Emerald is forever out of your hands now! It, and my son, shall be spared from the doom that will befall us all!"

"You fool! Without the Emerald, our civilization IS doomed! You've ruined everything!" Zod shouted as his soldiers looked through the hatch at the receding capsule in horror.

Jor-El shook his head. "Not so, Zod! By my actions, I have ensured that some vestige of our people will survive, somewhere out in the cosmos! For by my calculations, our entire planet and everything on it shall be destroyed in three… Two… One…"

Everyone cringed, anticipating their imminent end… And nothing happened. After a few seconds, the gathered echidnas blinked and looked around, realizing that they were very much not dead. Zod raised an eyebrow. Jor-El coughed. "Er, must have miscalculated…ahem! Three…two…one…!"

The planet continued to not explode. The echidnas continued to not die a horrible death. Zod looked bored. Non coughed. Ursa did her nails. Several more minutes passed, and nothing happened, despite the increasingly frantic and desperate scientist insisting that it was totally gonna happen, any minute now, just hang on a second, the planet's definitely gonna blow up, just you wait, you'll see, you'll ALL see. Slowly, Lara turned to her husband, eye twitching. "Jor-El, I seem to recall you saying that our planet was about to explode, which is the only reason I even CONSIDERED putting my only son into a rocket by himself and blasting him off into space to some planet I've never even seen or heard of before now. And yet, our planet has not exploded, despite you insisting several dozen times a day that it was absolutely going to happen at this time. Even when our friends and neighbors turned against you and the media labeled you as a crackpot, I stood by you, because I knew you were a great man, and was SURE that there was no possible way you could do something big enough to ruin our family, our lives, and your career without good reason. And yet, we're still standing. What do you have to say to this?"

Jor-El gulped. "It's, ah, possible that I may have misinterpreted the data a little bit…?"

"I'LL MISINTERPRET YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH!" She screamed, lunging at her husband and beginning to strangle him.

Ursa, an attractive green echidna female, smirked. "Should we stop them?"

Zod chuckled. "No, give her a minute to let it out of her system, and THEN arrest him. Non, send someone after that capsule, we should be able to intercept it before it leaves the system –"

And that's when the planet exploded, killing everyone on it.

…

"I flew through the depths of space, eventually reaching Earth and landing on Angel Island. Following the advice and guidance my father left me, I grew up to be a strong hero and the mighty Guardian of the Master Emerald! The end," Knuckles concluded. Everyone stared him blankly. "What?"

"You were right, Charmy, that _was_ lame," Vector said.

"Somebody pick up the phone, because I freaking CALLED IT!" Charmy whooped.

"Knuckles, that's SUPERMAN's origin story!" Sonic yelled.

Knuckles' eyes shifted about. "… No, it isn't."

"It totally is!" Sonic insisted.

"Yeah, you even ripped off Jor-El's speech from two different movies!" Tails agreed.

"Ah, but it ISN'T Superman's origin because Superman doesn't look like an echidna, and he's from planet KRYPTON, not Zircon!" Knuckles insisted rather desperately.

"Then why did everyone in that story have the same names as people from Superman?" Shadow asked.

"…Um…uh…they're…really common names in outer space?" Knuckles suggested weakly.

Everyone glared at him. "Seriously? You really think we're dumb enough to fall for that?" Amy asked incredulously.

"Yeah, who did you think we were, you?" Espio quipped.

Cream nodded. "Even I'm not that naïve."

"That story's so famous, we're still retelling it in the FYOO-CHURR," Silver said.

"Does that mean they're still making Superman movies in your time?" Shadow asked, intrigued.

Silver nodded. "They are indeed."

"And are they any GOOD?" Rouge asked.

Silver made a face. "It varies. They don't have the same rate of consistency as the Marvel movies tend to have…though they STILL insist on rebooting Spider-Man all the time for some reason."

Everyone groaned. "Figures that wouldn't change," Espio grumbled.

"Poor Spider-Man. It must be terrible to be rebooted over and over again," Cream said sadly.

"Such is the life of a comic book character, I suppose," Charmy said philosophically.

"I'm from another dimension, and even THERE we know that story!" Blaze said.

"Really?" Vector asked in surprise.

Blaze nodded. "Superman is a hero whose tale transcends many worlds, like many of his ilk. He is known in many universes, even ones that don't have comic books."

"Huh. Neat," the crocodile said.

"I-AM-DISAPPOINTED-AND-DEEPLY-INSULTED-THAT-YOU-THOUGHT-WE'D-FALL-FOR-THAT," Omega said scornfully.

"And even if all of us didn't already know this story, it still doesn't make any sense because the Master Emerald has existed on this planet for thousands of years, as has the echidna race," Tails pointed out.

"…Uhhh… I'm actually thousands of years old, but I've been in stasis for most that time due to an accident when I crashed… And, uh, the Master Emerald managed to re-create my people as the ancient echidna civilizations, but then they were all wiped out or banished to another dimension before I woke up, so…uh…Yeah, you aren't buying any of this, are you?" Knuckles said with a sigh.

"Nope," Mighty said, happily chewing on yet another chili dog.

"Plus, some of us already KNOW your real origin, and it's not that," Sonic pointed out. "What's the deal, Knux?"

Knuckles sighed. "Compared to the stories that you guys have said so far, my REAL origin really _is_ pretty lame, as Charmy put it. I wanted to think of something cool that would impress everyone."

"Well, you failed," Shadow said bluntly.

"It can't be that bad," Vector said encouragingly.

Sonic made a face. "Well, it sort of is…"

"Well, we want to hear it anyway! Please tell us, Mr. Knuckles?" Cream asked pleadingly.

"Yes, please tell us, Mr.…Er, I mean, Knuckles," Silver urged the last of the echidnas.

"Yes, do tell us, Knuckles," Rouge said in a breathy voice as she pressed herself against the echidna, eyelashes fluttering, lips flush, bosom heaving sensually against his skin. Shadow smirked and rolled his eyes at the display, while privately feeling a little envious.

Knuckles sighed, giving in. "Well, all right, but don't say I didn't warn you. It all started on a sunny day, many years ago…"

…

The floating land mass that was Angel Island drifted blissfully through the heavens, continuing to throw up a giant middle finger to the laws of physics and that bitch gravity as it had for the last several thousand years. On a high hill at the center of the island rested an ancient shrine, seven columns in varying states of disrepair surrounding a central dais, the stone weathered by countless years of exposure to the elements. A gigantic green brilliant cut gemstone slowly hovered on its tip in the center of this dais, utterly pristine and without flaw, despite also being exposed to the elements for ages beyond remembering, a faint, warm glow emanating from its center.

Nestled near the base of the gemstone was a small white egg. The egg shook slightly. A crack formed in its surface, followed by another, and another. Finally, the egg split apart, revealing a tiny red echidna puggle, blinking blearily as its eyes adjusted to the sunlight and the great glowing jewel nearby.

The Emerald pulsed, and a ball of glowing pink light emerged from it, coalescing to form a beautiful female peach-orange echidna with white stripes on some of her dreadlocks, a white tank top, a tribal dress with beige, green, and red triangular patterns, white sandals with white straps, thick cobalt blue wrist bracelets, white gloves, a golden tiara-like band with a blue jewel in the center, a golden necklace with a blue jewel in it, and white bandages. "Welcome to life, little Knuckles! I am Tikal, and I am here to guide you and train you to become the Guardian of the Master Emerald!"

"Mama!" Knuckles squeaked.

Tikal giggled. "While that is very flattering, Knuckles, I am afraid that no, I am not your mother."

The puggle considered this for a moment. "Mama?" He inquired, pointing to the Emerald.

Tikal shook her head. "No, dear, that's not your mother either. It is your sacred charge, and it is your purpose in life to guard it, and protect it from all who might misuse its powers, but it is not your mother."

Knuckles' lip quivered, and his eyes started tearing up. "Mama?" He inquired again.

"Gone, I'm afraid, along with your entire species. Congratulations, you are the last echidna!" Tikal said cheerfully.

Knuckles stared at her for a moment, and then burst into tears. Tikal winced. "On second thought, that might not have been most tactful way to handle it… Forgot that mortals don't take being told that people they care about are no longer around pretty well, because they're incapable of comprehending the transience of physical existence, and the immortal transcendental nature of the soul due to their fleshy brains being limited by three-dimensional thinking. Dang it, I've always been better with Chao than kids…" The Emerald pulsed. "No, no, I can handle this. There's no need for you to come out… I'm sure I can handle this. I'm not going to let him turn out like the last bunch." The Emerald pulsed again. "Okay, yes, I'm a bit out of touch with mortals considering that I've been more or less dead for the last 4000 years, but really, how hard could raising a kid be?"

Suddenly, Knuckles threw up. Both he and Tikal stared at the vomit for moment, and then the baby echidna started shoving it back into his mouth. Tikal scowled and glared at the Emerald, which was somehow radiating smugness. "Not a word."

…

"And that's it," Knuckles said.

Everyone stared at him for a moment. "That's it?" Shadow asked.

"Yep. That's it," Knuckles said.

"You hatched, this ghost popped out and told you who you were and that the rest of your species was dead, threw up, and… The end?" Vector asked in disbelief.

"More or less," Knuckles said. "Now do you see why I wanted to embellish a bit?"

"Yeah, I could probably have gone without hearing about you eating your own vomit," said a disgusted Mighty.

"That was even lamer than the last one," Charmy said.

"And also a lie!" Cream said angrily. "Mr. Knuckles, I thought you would tell us the truth this time!"

"Huh? But that WAS, the truth, Cream!" Knuckles protested.

Cream shook her head, long ears flopping about her. "You said you hatched from an egg! But that can't be right, only birds and fish and insects and reptiles and weird alien things hatch from eggs, and you're clearly a mammal!"

"Actually, Cream, echidnas like Knuckles belong to a small group of mammals called 'monotremes' that can lay eggs," Tails corrected the rabbit. "Aside from echidnas, the only other mammal capable of laying eggs is the platypus."

"Oh," Cream said. "I did not know that. I'm sorry, Mr. Knuckles, I should not have accused you of lying again."

"It's all right," Knuckles said.

"So, who was that ghost girl, exactly? She was kind of hot," Mighty commented.

"Yeah, who'd have thought female echidnas could look so pretty, given our only known male specimen?" Charmy joked.

"Hey!" Knuckles exclaimed.

"I would like to know as well," Blaze said. "I had thought that there were no echidnas other than Knuckles left in this dimension."

"Tikal doesn't exactly count on account of her being sort of… Dead," Amy said tactfully.

"Basically, thousands of years ago her dad, the leader of the tribe Knuckles is descended from, tried to steal the Master Emerald and use its power to take over the world, but in the process, he killed a bunch of Chao, royally pissed off Chaos, and got just about his entire civilization wiped out. Tikal had to sacrifice herself to seal Chaos away in the Emerald before he could destroy the world, and when Eggman inevitably learned about Chaos, let him out, and tried to use his power to take over the world, Tikal did her best to help us set things right and save the day," Sonic explained.

Blaze nodded. "A familiar story, one I've seen repeat itself a few times on my own world. I wonder why it's usually the Princess or high priestess of an ancient civilization that manages to be the last survivor or is sealed away to prevent against a future disaster?"

Sonic shrugged. "Search me. That's just the way these things happen, I guess."

"She also raised me a little growing up, though I wouldn't really go so far as to call her my mom, though I suppose she's the closest thing I ever had to one," Knuckles explained. "She showed up pretty infrequently, mainly long enough to teach me something important or make sure I wasn't starving to death, but often left me to my own devices. It'd been years since the last time I saw her when the Chaos incident happened, and I haven't seen her much since then."

"I've met her a few times, usually after I've stolen the Master Emerald and was waiting for you to catch up to me to take it back," Rouge said. "I don't think she feels like I'm the right sort of girlfriend for you."

"You kind of aren't," Shadow pointed out.

Rouge smirked. "Well, yeah, obviously, but since when has that ever stopped me before?"

"While I thank you for being honest this time, I can't help but admit I'm a little disappointed," Silver complained. "I was kind of expecting a little more than that, Knuckles."

Knuckles threw up his hands in exasperation. "I've told you guys more than once that I'm an orphan and have no idea what happened to the rest of my people! What else were you really expecting?!"

"Tikal never told you?" Espio asked.

Knuckles shook his head. "She told me a few things, but whenever I asked too many questions about what happened to the other echidnas, she always clammed up and promised to tell me some day."

"And that day is today!"

Knuckles started and turned around to see that the ancient echidna spirit princess who was sort of his surrogate mother was standing just behind him. "Tikal!" He cried in surprise.

"Gah! Ghost! GHOOOOOOOOOOOOST!" Charmy screamed.

"Actually, I'm not a ghost so much as an individual who has transcended mortality and is no longer bound by the shackles of time or physical existence," Tikal corrected the bee.

"…Gah! Individual who has transcended mortality and is no longer bound by the shackles of time or physical existence! INDIVIDUAL WHO HAS TRANSCENDED MORTALITY AND IS NO LONGER BOUND BY THE SHACKLES OF TIME OR PHYSICAL EXISTEEEEEEENCE!" Charmy screamed. Tikal facepalmed.

"Gosh, she's pretty," Vector said. "But, uh, not as pretty as my dear Vanilla, of course!" Espio groaned and shook his head.

"Hey, Tikal! Long time no see!" Sonic said, walking over to shake the other echidna's hand.

"Yeah, we haven't seen you since the Chaos incident!" Tails agreed. "How are you doing?"

"Oh, not too badly. Watching with dismay as Knuckles continues to blunder about doing a mediocre job as Guardian of the Master Emerald, exploring the furthest reaches of reality, learning the secrets of the universe, having mind blowing sex with Chaos… Nothing too big," Tikal said.

"…Okay, we did not need to hear that last bit," Amy said after a moment.

"How… How would that even WORK?!" Tails asked, looking horrified.

"Well, you see–" Tikal started.

Knuckles interjected, laughing nervously. "Ah, well, I don't think any of them REALLY need to hear about your sex life, Tikal."

"Actually, I'm kind of curious-" Silver started.

"NONE OF THEM REALLY NEED TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR SEX LIFE," Knuckles shouted. "And what do you mean, I'm doing a mediocre job?!"

"You're the Guardian of the Master Emerald, yet instead of guarding it, you're here having a party with your friends," Tikal said.

Knuckles flushed. "W-well, I WANTED to stay, but they keep dragging me off to stuff like this!"

"And you let yourself get dragged away," Tikal pointed out. "I know it's important to have friends, and I approve of you having a life outside your job––Chaos is fully capable of protecting the Emerald while you're away, to the point where I sometimes think he'd actually be a lot BETTER at it than you are––but I have to wonder if maybe a line should be drawn when you skip guard duty to take part in races or treasure hunts or other sporting events that have nothing to do with saving the world."

Knuckles fidgeted. "Yeah… Well…"

"There's also the fact that you have a rather abysmal track record when it comes to stopping people from stealing and/or destroying the Master Emerald," Tikal added. "Your extreme gullibility doesn't exactly help matters in that regard, even if you DON'T take into account the countless times where you broke the Emerald yourself by accident."

"Yeah, like when you kicked us off the island for breaking the Emerald 10 times in one week when YOU broke it 100 times in a single day!" Mighty shouted.

Knuckles' eye twitched. "I'm never going to live that down, am I?"

"Nope," Charmy said.

"She has a point, Knux. You COULD be doing a bit of a better job protecting that thing, or being less gullible," Sonic said.

"I'm not that gullible!" Knuckles insisted.

Tikal raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

…

Knuckles stood before the Master Emerald, a determined look on his face, every muscle and line in his body tensed for action. He was the Guardian of the Master Emerald, and nobody was going to steal it on his watch!

Suddenly, Dr. Eggman appeared in his Egg Mobile. "Knuckles, Knuckles!" He cried. "It's terrible! Sonic is going to try and steal the Master Emerald!"

Knuckles gasped. "What?! Oh no, he won't! SOOONIIIIIIC!"

He ran off. "Yoink!" Eggman said, snatching the Emerald up in a large claw extending from the bottom of his hovercraft and flying off with it.

…

Knuckles stood before the Master Emerald, a determined look on his face, every muscle and line in his body tensed for action. He was the Guardian of the Master Emerald, and nobody was going to steal it on his watch!

"Hey, Knuckles, can I borrow the Master Emerald for a little bit? I think it would look great as a display in my nightclub, and I promise I'll bring it right back!" Rouge asked, sauntering up to Knuckles and sensually running her fingers down his spine.

Knuckles faltered, his heart skipping a beat in the presence of his incredibly hot and sexy sort-of girlfriend. "Well… I probably shouldn't, but… If you promise to bring it right back… I guess it'll be okay," he said, fighting down a blush.

"Thanks!" She said, kissing him fully on the lips, then picking up the Emerald and flying away with it while he swooned, a look of delirious joy on his face.

It wasn't until she did not, in fact, bring it right back, that he realized he'd been had.

…

Knuckles stood before the Master Emerald, a determined look on his face, every muscle and line in his body tensed for action. He was the Guardian of the Master Emerald, and nobody was going to steal it on his watch!

Suddenly, Dr. Eggman appeared in his Egg Mobile. "Knuckles, Knuckles!" He cried. "It's terrible! Sonic is going to try and steal the Master Emerald!"

Knuckles gasped. "What?! Oh no, he… Wait, that's what you said last time, and you were lying!"

"Yes, but I MEAN it this time! He's really going to try and steal the Master Emerald!" Eggman said.

Knuckles gasped. "What?! Oh no, he won't! SOOONIIIIIIC!"

He ran off. "Yoink!" Eggman said, snatching the Emerald up in a large claw extending from the bottom of his hovercraft and flying off with it.

…

Knuckles stood before the Master Emerald, a determined look on his face, every muscle and line in his body tensed for action. He was the Guardian of the Master Emerald, and nobody was going to steal it on his watch!

"Hey, Knuckles, can I borrow the Master Emerald for a little bit? I think it would look great as a display in my nightclub, and I promise I'll bring it right back!" Rouge asked, sauntering up to Knuckles and sensually running her fingers down his spine.

"That's what you said last time, and you lied!" Knuckles pointed out.

"Yes, but I'm NOT lying this time," said, pouting and giving him an incredibly sexy, pleading look. "And I promise we'll go on a really nice date after I bring it back!"

Knuckles faltered, his heart skipping a beat in the presence of his incredibly hot and sexy sort-of girlfriend. "Well… I probably shouldn't, but… If you promise to bring it right back for real this time, and we'll go on a really nice date… I guess it'll be okay," he said, fighting down a blush.

"Thanks!" She said, kissing him fully on the lips, then picking up the Emerald and flying away with it while he swooned, a look of delirious joy on his face.

This only lasted a few seconds before he realized he'd been deceived again. "DAMMIT!"

…

Knuckles stood before the Master Emerald, a determined look on his face, every muscle and line in his body tensed for action. He was the Guardian of the Master Emerald, and nobody was going to steal it on his watch!

Suddenly, Dr. Eggman appeared in his Egg Mobile. "Knuckles, Knuckles!" He cried. "It's terrible! Sonic is going to try and steal the Master Emerald!"

Knuckles gasped. "What?! Oh no, he… Wait, that's what you said last time, and you were lying!"

"Yes, but I MEAN it this time! He's really going to try and steal the Master Emerald!" Eggman said.

"You said that last time too!" Knuckles argued.

"Yes, but I really MEAN it this time! He's really going to try and steal the Master Emerald!" Eggman said.

Knuckles gasped. "What?! Oh no, he won't! SOOONIIIIIIC!"

He ran off. "Yoink!" Eggman said, snatching the Emerald up in a large claw extending from the bottom of his hovercraft and flying off with it.

…

Knuckles stood before the Master Emerald, a determined look on his face, every muscle and line in his body tensed for action. He was the Guardian of the Master Emerald, and nobody was going to steal it on his watch!

"Hey, Knuckles, can I-" Rouge asked, sauntering up, but Knuckles interrupted her.

"NO! You CANNOT borrow the Master Emerald for any reason!" Knuckles snapped.

Rouge gasped. "I-I was just going to ask if you wanted to have dinner and go see a movie together! You didn't need to be so MEAN!" She ran off in tears.

"W-wait, Rouge! Come back! I'd love to do those things with you! I'm sorry!" Knuckles cried in horror, chasing after the bat.

In a flash of green light, Shadow the Hedgehog materialized on top of the Master Emerald. "Heh, Sucker. CHAOS CONTROL!"

He and the Emerald disappeared in another flash of light.

…

Knuckles stood before the Master Emerald, a determined look on his face, every muscle and line in his body tensed for action. He was the Guardian of the Master Emerald, and nobody was going to steal it on his watch!

Suddenly, Dr. Eggman appeared in his Egg Mobile. "Knuckles, Knuckles!" He cried. "It's terrible-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, Sonic's going to steal the Master Emerald, right?" Knuckles said sarcastically. "Nice try, Eggman, but I'm not gonna fall for that this time!"

"Actually, I was going to tell you that he'd ALREADY stolen the Master Emerald, and you have to go after him before he gets away with it!" Eggman said.

Knuckles gasped. "What?! Oh no, he won't! SOOONIIIIIIC!"

He ran off. "Yoink!" Eggman said, snatching the Emerald, which had been right behind Knuckles the whole time, up in a large claw extending from the bottom of his hovercraft and flying off with it.

…

Knuckles stood before the Master Emerald, a determined look on his face, every muscle and line in his body tensed for action. He was the Guardian of the Master Emerald, and nobody was going to steal it on his watch!

"Hey, Knuckles, can I-" Rouge asked, sauntering up, but Knuckles interrupted her.

"If you want to borrow the Master Emerald, the answer is no. If you want to go on a date, though, I might be okay with it," he said cautiously.

Rouge smiled radiantly. "What a remarkable coincidence! That's exactly what I was going to ask you. As it so happens, I managed to get two ringside seats to the World-Wide Mobian Wrestling Confederacy Championship Match, and figured you might want to go with me because both of us love watching sweaty, hunky, overly-muscled guys beating the crap out of each other in staged fights."

Knuckles perked up at this. "You're right, it's one of my favorite sources of entertainment! But…I dunno, I've kind of been slipping up on guard duty lately…and I could probably watch it on Pay-Per-View…"

"Knuckles, you know as well as I do that watching it on TV isn't anywhere NEAR as involved as seeing it in person," Rouge pointed out. "Especially watching it from the ringside, where you'll be so close you could hit someone with a chair or maybe catch a wrestler's sweaty towel…"

"Well…I have always dreamed of having one of those towels," Knuckles said, chewing his lip in thought. "And the reception up here's pretty lousy anyway…oh, all right, what's the harm? Let's go!"

"I'd hoped you'd say that!" said the pleased Rouge, offering an arm. Knuckles took it, and they walked off.

In a flash of green light, Shadow the Hedgehog materialized on top of the Master Emerald, along with Omega. "Why does he always fall for her lies? What a moron," Shadow grunted.

"HE-IS-IN-LOVE," Omega pointed out. "AND-YOU-KNOW-YOU'D-ALSO-PROBABLY-DO-JUST-ABOUT-ANYTHING-IF-ROUGE-ASKED-YOU-TO."

"Point," Shadow admitted. "All right, let's get this out of here. CHAOS CONTROL!"

The two of them and the Emerald disappeared in a flash of green light.

…

Knuckles stood before the Master Emerald, a determined look on his face, every muscle and line in his body tensed for action. He was the Guardian of the Master Emerald, and nobody was going to steal it on his watch!

Suddenly, Dr. Eggman appeared in his Egg Mobile. "Knuckles, Knuckles!" He cried. "It's terrible-"

"Sonic has already stolen the Master Emerald, and is getting away with it?" Knuckles asked skeptically.

"Exactly!" Eggman said.

"Then how do you explain why it's right behind me?" Knuckles asked, pointing at the Emerald right behind him.

"Oh, it's not," Eggman said.

Knuckles blinked. "It isn't?"

"Nope," Eggman said.

"Really? Because it kind of looks like it's there to me," Knuckles said.

"It's a hologram Tails whipped up," Eggman explained.

Knuckles gasped. "Of course! That sneaky little fox! He's not going to get away with this! SOOONIIIIIC! Oh, and TAAAAAIIIILLLS!"

He ran off. Eggman shook his head. "He's making this so easy, it's not even fun anymore. Oh well. Yoink!" He said, snatching the Emerald up in a large claw extending from the bottom of his hovercraft and flying off with it.

…

Knuckles stood before the Master Emerald, a determined look on his face, every muscle and line in his body tensed for action. He was the Guardian of the Master Emerald, and nobody was going to steal it on his watch!

Suddenly, Dr. Eggman appeared in his Egg Mobile. "Hello, there, I was wondering-"

"Not another step! Or, um, float?" Knuckles said angrily. "Whatever you have to say, Eggman, I'm not listening to it!"

"Oh, but I'm not Eggman," said the man in the hovercraft, and Knuckles suddenly realize that it wasn't. It LOOKED like Eggman, but the colors were all wrong; his coat was black and yellow, his body suit was red with yellow and black striped boots, he had dark blue sunglasses, gray goggles with a single green lens, his nose was longer, and his mustache was white. "I'm Dr. Agen Namgge, a perfectly innocent photographer, and I was wondering if I could just take a snapshot of your prized Master Emerald real quickly."

"Oh, well, I suppose that's all right, then," Knuckles said, mollified.

"Thanks! It will just take a second," the photographer said, taking out a rather advanced- looking multicolored digital camera. "I'm sorry, but do you think you could move a bit to the side? I don't want you ruining the shot. "

"Oh, sure," Knuckles said, moving out of the way.

"Thanks!" The photographer said, raising the camera to his face. There was a flash of light, the camera whirred, and a card shot out of the side. "Oh, yeah, that'll look GREAT in my collection! Thank you so much!"

"No problem! Happy to help!" Knuckles said, waving amiably as the photographer flew away. "What a nice guy… Hey, wait a second, where's the Master Emerald?!"

…

Knuckles stood there, looking even redder than normal, trying very hard to ignore the raucous laughs from his so-called friends. "Th-those situations were taken completely out of context!" He cried shrilly.

"No, they weren't," Tikal said.

"Not. Helping," he hissed.

"I wasn't trying to," she said, honestly.

"Knuckles, man, I love you like a brother," Sonic wheezed, wiping away a tear as he wrapped an arm around Knuckles' shoulder. "Well, not like my ACTUAL brother, you'd never be able to replace Muttski in my heart, but I care about you a lot… Which is why I want you to know I mean you no disrespect when I say that you have got to be the worst Guardian of an ancient sacred relic in the history of ever."

"As a Guardian of sacred relics myself, I find myself completely disappointed and ashamed in you," Blaze said. "The few times when any of my charges have been stolen from me, it certainly wasn't done in such a transparent and pathetic way as any of those. And Eggman Nega _certainly_ never used a disguise as transparent as saying his name backwards…"

"And those are just some of the LEAST embarrassing examples!" Tikal said cheerfully, causing Knuckles to groan.

"What I find most insulting is how Eggman keeps fooling you by saying that Sonic and I were trying to steal the Emerald. Knuckles, why do you always believe the worst of us, your best friends, even though Eggman has shown every single time that he absolutely cannot be trusted, under any circumstances, and yet you continue to listen to him over us anyway?" Tails asked.

"Hey, yeah! That's not cool, Knux! I thought we were tighter than that," Sonic said, looking affronted.

"Yeah, Knuckles, why DO you constantly trust Eggman over your own friends?" Amy asked, indignant.

Knuckles' eyes started about. "…Because I believe in peace and think that deep down, everyone is capable of doing good?" He said weakly.

Everyone stared at him blankly. "Yeah, no, not buying it," Shadow said.

"Yes, that's my thing, and even I don't fall for Eggman's lies," Cream agreed.

"I think it's just because he's not very bright," Espio said. The others murmured and nodded in agreement, believing that made the most sense out of everything.

Knuckles' eye twitched. "What is this, 'Pick on Knuckles Day?!'" He was starting to understand why he was so willing to trust Eggman's claims that his so-called 'friends' were going to betray him now.

"THAT-WOULD-BE-A-FUN-HOLIDAY," Omega commented.

Rouge hugged Knuckles. "Don't worry, sweetie, even if you're a complete and utter lunkhead, we love you anyway, just the way you are. For some reason."

Tikal nodded in agreement. "Yes, despite your incompetence, you are a far better Guardian than your predecessors in many ways."

"Yeah Knux, all joshing aside, you know we care about you, right?" Sonic said.

"Plus, you kind of have to put up with us since we're the only people who'd bother associating with you anyway," Shadow said.

"The same could be said for you, you know," Blaze pointed out. The black hedgehog grunted.

Knuckles smiled at that, his irritation fading somewhat. "Thanks, guys… I think. Anyway, what are you doing here, Tikal?"

"Chaos sent me down here to pick up some chili dogs since you rather thoughtlessly didn't invite either of us to the party," Tikal scolded Knuckles. "Which wasn't very considerate of you, Knuckles!"

"Yeah, Knuckles, that was incredibly rude!" Mighty said, enjoying seeing the echidna squirm.

"How very rude of you, Mr. Knuckles!" Cream scolded him.

"But… But I…" Knuckles protested feebly.

"Also, I wanted to see, all you, my dear friends again!" Tikal said warmly. "So Blaze, when's the baby due? And have you settled that little issue with Borogvia yet?"

Sonic stiffened, and Amy paled in horror. "…This is the first time we've met," Blaze said. "And I haven't even begun my campaign in Borogvia yet. And I'm certainly not pregnant." Sonic and Amy both sighed in relief at that, and Blaze glared at her lover, causing him to give her a sheepish grin.

Tikal blinked. "You aren't? Oh, darn, I got the dates mixed up again! Time doesn't quite apply to me the same way it does the rest of you due to my current state of existence. I feel so sorry for you, having to constantly experience time going FORWARD…veeeery slowly… In bodies that are slowly dying every second of every day. I honestly don't know how you can stand it."

"Eh, we manage," Vector said.

"MY body isn't slowly dying every second of every day," Shadow grumbled.

"Didn't you used to have a body like ours?" Tails asked.

"Yes, but that was so very long ago I can barely remember what it was like, honestly. I don't really miss it that much, especially since I can do all of the best parts of having a physical body even in this form, plus extra!" Tikal said. She demonstrated this by taking a bite out of one of the nearby chili dogs. She made a groan of delight. "Oh man, I really see why you South Island types love these things so much…"

"Yeah, it's practically our national food!" Sonic said proudly.

"There've been a few attempts to put it on the flag. It's only barely failed to pass, every time," Mighty lamented.

"Anyway, there IS another reason I'm here," Tikal admitted. "Knuckles, I believe it's finally time you learn the truth about your past!"

"FINALLY!" Knuckles shouted.

"Which means I'll have something more substantiated than that piece of drivel Knuckles gave us just a moment ago! Excellent!" Silver said eagerly.

"So what happened, Tikal? What happened to my parents, my people?" Knuckles asked. "And why haven't you told me before now?"

"I didn't tell you before now because I knew that now was the time I WOULD tell you," Tikal said. "I perceive time differently from you, after all."

"Oh," Knuckles said.

"So what happened? The rest of us want to know too!" Rouge said.

"YES, EVEN-I-AM-CURIOUS. SOMETHING-CAPABLE-OF-REMOVING-AN-ENTIRE-PEOPLE-FROM-THE-FACE-OF-THE-EARTH-COULD-BE-OF-GREAT-USE-TO-ME-SOMEDAY, WHEN-I-LAY-WASTE-TO-THE-WORLD," Omega said.

"Does it worry anyone else when he says things like that?" Espio asked. There were a few noncommittal grunts and shrugs. The chameleon sighed.

"Well, our story begins 4000 years ago," Tikal began. "As I'm sure most of you recall, back then there was a great war between two mighty clans of echidnas: the physically powerful Knuckles clan—my tribe and your ancestors, Knuckles—and the technologically advanced Nocturnus."

"They're the ones who made Gemerl!" Cream recalled.

"Well, technically they made Emerl, who was rebuilt by Eggman into Gemerl and then reprogrammed by me, but yes, that was them," Tails said.

"I wonder how Shade's doing, back in the Twilight Cage?" Amy wondered. "Hope she's all right…"

"You'll find out soon enough," Tikal said cryptically. As they tried to puzzle out what the spirit meant by that, she continued. "My father, Pachacamac, tried to steal the Master Emerald to use its power to win the war, but in the process killed dozens of helpless Chao, angering their guardian Chaos, which is pretty much exactly what I told him would happen if he did something as stupid as that. Chaos wiped out pretty much our entire tribe, and I had to sacrifice my mortal existence to seal him inside the Master Emerald. The Nocturnus, believing that they were triumphant, prepared to conquer the world with their massive army of Gizoid soldiers, only to draw the ire of the almighty Argus, who banished them to the Twilight Cage, leaving only a handful of echidnas—the last of the Knuckles clan-remaining on our world."

"Why'd he do that?" Mighty asked.

"Argus is an incredibly powerful interdimensional being who imprisons species whom he deems to have become too dangerous in another dimension called the Twilight Cage," Tails explained. "At least, that's as much as we've figured out from what little the inhabitants of the Cage know about him."

"Hey, yeah, we never DID deal with that guy, did we? Weird," Sonic commented.

"You'll get to him someday," Tikal assured them. "Anyway, in the aftermath, the remnants of the Knuckles Clan, showing the characteristic lack of common sense and pattern recognition that their last descendent-as well as most of our species– –sadly seems to share, decided that since they were the only ones left, and Chaos was no longer an issue, there would be absolutely nothing wrong with them harnessing the power of the Master Emerald and using it to rebuild their shattered civilization."

"Wow, Knux, they were as bad at learning from past mistakes as you are!" Charmy quipped.

Knuckles facepalmed. "My respect for my ancestors drops by the second."

"Oh, it'll drop even further by the time we're done," Tikal said. "Using the Emerald's power, they lifted the surrounding land mass into the sky, creating Angel Island. They managed to rebuild and repopulate, soon creating a civilization nearly as powerful, if not more so, than the Nocturnus had been at the height of their power, though thankfully, they no longer had any interest in dominating the world."

"That's good," Amy said.

"Not really," Tikal said. "Mainly, it was because they didn't think the world WORTH conquering. You know how in lots of modern fantasy these days, elves are portrayed as being narcissistic, isolationist, xenophobic, racist assholes who have no regard for anyone other than themselves and wouldn't particularly care if everyone who wasn't an elf died horribly?"

Some of them nodded. "Those don't sound like the elves in the books I read," Cream said, looking upset.

"That's because you read books more oriented towards children, where the ironically-named Fair Folk are portrayed in a more positive light," Tails said. "In the old myths, they're often much crueler. The extent to which modern fantasy shows this varies, with some portraying elves as being completely perfect superior beings who are always right and can do no wrong and love to explain this to everyone who always agrees with them, others of which are horrible monsters like the kind described in the old stories, if not worse, while others—though not as many as there should be-take a bit of a middle ground, where they're clearly older and wiser and more beautiful than other species, but are still just as flawed and imperfect as the rest of us, much like some of the better elves in the Lord of the Rings."

"Legolas is so dreamy," Amy said wistfully.

"Unfortunately, far too many writers focus on the 'wise, beautiful, elder' part when they're trying to base their work off of Tolkien's, and fail to acknowledge the fallibility and problems his elves caused, causing them to come off as obnoxious elitist 'superior beings' to people who don't have a hard-on for elves," Tails lamented.

"I've run into elves a number of times back home," Blaze said. "If they're decent and don't cause any harm, I leave them alone unless they wish to join my empire. If they're hostile and cruel, I gleefully crush them beneath my heel and subjugate them to my will."

"That's not nice," Cream said.

"Far kinder than they would be if our positions were reversed, I can assure you," Blaze said. "If you only knew of half the things they've done, you'd agree I'm perfectly justified in my treatment of them."

"Yeah, those guys were dicks," Sonic agreed.

"Well, let me put it this way: the echidnas of Echidnaopolis had the patent on that idea long before the elves came around," Tikal said flatly. "Ever heard of the great Dingo civilization of Dingorado?"

"No," Rouge said.

"The Professor never told me about it, and he knew about just about every ancient civilization out there," Shadow said.

"Exactly what field did Professor Gerald specialize in, again?" asked a confused Espio. "Considering he made you, I thought he was more into bio-engineering or something like that."

"The Professor considered himself a student of all the sciences," Shadow said fondly.

"Just like my dad," Tails commented. He frowned. "Actually…come to think of it, I don't recall ever seeing a Mobian Dingo before…"

"That's because the echidnas wiped them out entirely, down to the last man, woman, and child, because they thought they were ugly," Tikal said bluntly. "And they're far from the only species they did that too, either."

They stared at Tikal in horror. "That's… That's horrible!" Amy cried.

"Those poor dingoes!" Cream gasped.

"Yep, definitely like some of the nastier elves back home," Blaze said.

"Seriously, Knuckles, what the hell?!" Vector demanded of the shocked echidna. "Is your entire species genetically predisposed to be evil or something?!"

"First, the Knuckles Clan murdered a bunch of innocent Chao to claim the Master Emerald and pissed off a God of destruction enough to nearly wipe out the planet-" Shadow started.

"Actually, it's more likely that Chaos is a Chao that's mutated to a higher state of being due to overexposure to the power of the Emeralds, much like how our kind were transformed from regular animals into sophonts thousands of years ago," Tails interjected.

Shadow rolled his eyes. "First, the Knuckles Clan murdered a bunch of innocent Chao to claim the Master Emerald and pissed off a Chao that's mutated to a higher state of being due to overexposure to the power of the Emeralds enough to nearly wipe out the planet," he amended. "Then the Nocturnus Clan tries to take over the world with an army of fighting robots capable of copying and learning the abilities of any opponent they come across, get banished for it, conquer an entire other dimension, and have every intention of taking over ours should they ever get back. Then your more recent ancestors become genocidal bastards riding around the world on a floating island and looking down their long snout that everyone on the ground below… Should we be worried that you're going to turn into an evil overlord or something?"

"I-I had no idea," Knuckles protested, shocked. "I didn't know any of this, honest! This is just as big a surprise to me––and an unwelcome one, at that!-as it is to you! How could they possibly be so horrible? And…" He swallowed. "Is that my fate, as well?"

"It is not," Tikal assured the horrified Guardian. "You need never fear becoming like your ancestors, Knuckles."

"Because he's so pure of heart?" Cream asked as Knuckles' shoulders sagged in relief.

"I was going to say it's because he's not smart enough to be evil, but that works too," Tikal said, causing Knuckles to sweatdrop.

"Wouldn't some say it's actually stupid to be evil?" Mighty commented.

"In which case, Mr. Knuckles isn't stupid, he's smart!" Cream said.

"Then why does he do so many stupid things?" Charmy asked.

"…Oh…um…because he's so smart his brain works at a level so far above us he seems stupid?" the rabbit said.

"…Yeah, no," Charmy said. "Plus, I'm not sure being evil _is_ stupid, considering how well it pays."

"Charmy! That's an awful thing to say!" said a shocked Amy.

"What? Even the dumbest bad guy we know, Eggman, is rich enough to throw together a giant robot army and airship fleet every few months, and I'm betting our former teammates aren't exactly wanting for dough either," Charmy said. "Whereas we Chaotix are stuck living in a shitty apartment constantly at risk of being evicted and/or eaten by loan sharks. And how many of _you_ lot are fantastically wealthy?"

"I rule the most prosperous nation on my planet," Blaze said.

"I've got millions from patents and royalties," Tails said.

"The money I put in the bank fifty years ago has matured handsomely," Shadow said.

"I'm ridiculously rich, but I didn't exactly get it through legitimate means, so I suppose it doesn't count," Rouge said.

"I'm actually very wealthy," Cream said.

"You are?" Sonic asked in surprise.

The rabbit nodded. "Yes, you see-"

"Can we not talk about money? It's making me depressed about how poor we are," Vector complained.

"Oh, sorry," Cream apologized.

"On the other hand, Vanilla being very rich might be another reason for you to pursue her," Espio commented.

The crocodile's eyes lit up at that. "Hey, yeah…wait, no! I want Vanilla for her heart, not her money!"

"But the money can't hurt," Espio pointed out.

"…Well…yeah…I guess…" Vector said uncertainly.

"Should I feel sad that my not being very bright may actually be an asset in this instance?" Knuckles grumbled.

"YES," Omega said apathetically.

Sonic patted Knuckles on the back. "Cheer up, Knux! Even if just about all of your ancestors were evil douchebags, that doesn't mean all echidnas are evil! Why, we've met plenty of good ones, like… Um… You, and Tikal, and Shade, and…uh…little help here?"

"How about Nestor? He seemed fairly nice," Rouge suggested.

"Right, him!" Sonic agreed.

"And there were those space pirates with a speech impediment," Tails recalled. "Though, given that they were pirates, I'm not sure if calling them 'good' might be entirely accurate."

"Yeah, those guys!" Sonic said with a grin. "And there was also…uh…." He frowned in thought and scratched his head, looking to the others for help. They shrugged. "…Actually, there weren't really any others, were there?"

"Well, it's possible that the majority of the Nocturnus soldiers we fought weren't evil so much as misguided, but even if that isn't the case, eight halfway decent echidnas out of potentially millions of evil-or at the very least antagonistic-ones isn't exactly a very promising look for a species," Shadow said. "Mostly Chaotic Evil isn't much better than Always Chaotic Evil."

Knuckles looked miserable at this again. "Well, there may be hope for the Nocturnus yet," Sonic said, trying to cheer up his friend. "Shade promised that she'd take over and turn things around when she had to go back to the Cage after she helped us liberate the world from Eggman. I mean, assuming nothing horrible happened since the last time we saw her, there's a chance that she's turned them away from the path they're on, right?"

"She has, actually," Tikal said. "But that's something you'll have to ask her about when next you see her."

"Then we WILL see her again?" Tails asked. Knuckles also seemed to perk up slightly at this notion.

The princess nodded. "Yes, and very soon. But right now, we are talking about the echidnas of Angel Island, not the Twilight Cage," Tikal said.

"Yes, please, continue," Silver urged Tikal.

"Yeah, we're just dying to hear more about how awful my people used to be, when they actually existed," Knuckles grumbled.

"Speaking of which, why did you let it get that bad in the first place?" Mighty asked.

"Hey, yeah, you were there! You could've done something! I mean, if you were able to manifest from the Emerald even BEFORE it got broken and let Chaos out, surely you could've manifested back then!" Amy agreed.

"On a related note, if the Master Emerald's broken a lot in the past, how come Chaos never escaped until right before the Station Square incident?" Espio asked.

"Hey, yeah, he should've come out every time we broke it, or especially when KNUCKLES broke it," Charmy agreed. Knuckles scowled at the crocodile.

"In the past, I was able to keep Chaos bound by keeping our essence divided among the Emerald shards until it could be reassembled," Tikal explained. "When Eggman broke the Emerald, however, he did it using some special device that could draw us out from the fragments and force us both to fully materialize. That's why we don't just pop up every single time the Emerald is broken since then, we don't have to if we don't feel like it because we exist on a higher plane that happens to be connected to your reality through the Master Emerald."

"That makes sense," Tails said.

"It does?" Sonic asked dubiously.

"Certainly. The Master Emerald is an artifact that exists simultaneously across the space-time continuum and isn't REALLY a gemstone so much as a physical manifestation of the link connecting our humdrum reality with the higher dimensional plane that is the Chaos Force, the source of all Chaos energy," the Fox explained.

"Ah," Sonic said vaguely.

"I only understood about half of that," Vector confessed after a moment.

"Like that's a surprise," Mighty grumbled.

Tails sighed. "Sometimes I wonder why I bother trying to explain things…"

"You have the right of it, Tails," Tikal said. "And as for why I didn't do anything to stop the echidnas from developing like that…" She sighed. "When the remnants of the Knuckles clan found their way back to the Emerald, and I saw that they clearly intended to try and harness its power once more, I considered manifesting and passing myself off as a spirit, or perhaps pretending to be Aurora, to either scare them off, or possibly try and teach them to become a better people and not make the same mistakes as their predecessors."

"Aurora? Who's that?" Blaze asked.

"It's a very pretty name," Cream stated.

Tikal opened her mouth, but surprisingly, Shadow beat her to it. "Aurora is an ancient deity, believed to have ascended to godhood alongside her husband Enerjak when their studies into the nature of the Chaos Force brought them to the attentions of the mysterious Ancient Walkers, who deemed them worthy of divinity."

"That's correct," Tikal said, impressed.

"How did you know that, Shadow?" Asked the surprised Rouge.

Shadow shrugged. "Professor Gerald taught me a bit of ancient mythology, along with many of my other lessons. I don't believe he was aware that she was an ECHIDNA deity, but then again, there's still quite a lot about the echidna civilization and culture we still don't know about, especially since Knuckles isn't inclined to let archaeologists poke around his island."

"They aren't going to be digging up my island on my watch!" Knuckles asserted.

"You also say that nobody's going to steal the Master Emerald on your watch, and yet, inexplicably, they almost always manage to do so," Espio pointed out. Knuckles grunted.

"Is Aurora real? Is she someone we might run into and/or have to fight at some point?" Sonic asked.

"Yes, she's real, and probably not going to be a threat anytime soon," Tikal assured them. "She's quite nice, and we go on double dates all the time, or the equivalent thereof for beings like us. Anyway, I decided not to go through with that plan, because I didn't feel comfortable pretending to be someone I wasn't, or being worshiped as a deity—especially since, as I said, Aurora was REAL and I doubted she'd be happy with someone pretending to be her. I mean, yes, I had transcended physical existence, was privy to knowledge and wisdom far beyond mortal ken, was no longer bound by the shackles of time, and had access to unfathomable powers, but I did not think of myself as a god. I still don't, for that matter. I decided to be optimistic and left them alone, trusting that they would learn from their past mistakes and figure things out on their own." She sighed. "This was, of course, an absolutely terrible idea, since as I'm sure you've all realized for now, it is incredibly rare for an echidna to learn from their past mistakes. Just look at Knuckles." The echidna in question scowled. "And unfortunately, by the time I'd realized my error, I was too late to do anything to stop it. The Brotherhood of Guardians had hooked the Master Emerald up to so many machines, channeling its power all over the island, I was incapable of manifesting myself without withdrawing the vital power needed to maintain Chaos's seal, and while there were times I was tempted to just release him and let him wipe out my people for a second time, out of some lingering sentiment towards my former kin and desire not to be party to genocide I did not." She shrugged. "Of course, it was all a moot point anyway in the end, but…"

"'Brotherhood of Guardians?'" Mighty inquired." You mean they didn't just have the one back then, like we do now?"

Knuckles started this. "There used to be more?!"

Tikal nodded. "Indeed there were. In those times, the Master Emerald was protected, as it is now, by Guardians…except instead of one defender, it had several, an entire family, the Brotherhood of Guardians…your family, Knuckles," Tikal said.

Knuckles' eyes widened at this. "My family…" Now they were getting somewhere!

"Knuckles had a family?" Asked the surprised Charmy.

"Well, logically he would have to have had one," Espio pointed out. "After all, he can't have just spontaneously sprung into existence, conjured by the Master Emerald… Can he?"

"No, he could not," Tikal said. "He was born in the usual way, his egg conceived by the joining of Lara-Le and Locke, youngest of the Brotherhood. He, along with his father Sabre, grandfather Athair, great-great-grandfather Thunderhawk, great-great-great-grandfather Sojourner, and great-great-great-great-grandfather Spectre, were responsible for watching over the Master Emerald, regulating its power, and deciding how best it could be used to benefit the echidnas of Angel Island, as well as themselves."

"That's a lot of greats," Sonic whistled.

"Wow! You sure have a big family tree, Mr. Knuckles!" Cream said, impressed.

"Amazing…I had no idea there were so many others before me…" Said the awestruck echidna.

"And there were many still before that, going back many generations to the first Guardian, Edmund, your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, long, long ago," Tikal said.

"Okay, that's even more greats," said a dumbfounded Cream.

"Quite the pedigree," Blaze said. "I've known dynasties that weren't around as long as that."

Rouge nodded. "I can't think of many families besides my own that have been around that long, and even I'm not sure I have that many 'greats' in my history. Well, okay, they were all great, but not…oh, you get my meaning."

"What, no girls allowed in this club? Typical," snorted Amy.

"There was a female Guardian at one point, Janelle-Li, but she died," Tikal said.

The hedgehog rolled her eyes. "Of course she did."

"To be fair, it is called a Brotherhood. If they allowed more girls in, it'd have to be called a 'Siblinghood,' which doesn't have quite the same ring to it," Shadow quipped.

"I'm pretty sure 'Brotherhood' can be a gender-neutral term, but I see your meaning. What if they called it a Fellowship?" Tails suggested.

Shadow considered this. "…Huh. The Fellowship of Guardians…that's actually not bad."

"If it's good enough for Tolkien, it should be good enough for everyone else," the fox agreed.

"Wait, those guys must've been really old. How could they still be serving on this brotherhood instead of being retired, or dead?" Vector asked.

"YES, LIKE-OTHER-PATHETIC-ORGANICS-WHO-GET-WEAKER-WITH-AGE," Omega sneered.

"The Brotherhood were able to give themselves immortality, or at the very least longevity, by drawing upon power from the Master Emerald," Tikal explained. "As such, a member of the Brotherhood could remain a Guardian for a very, very long time."

"And was this immortality or longevity shared with the populace?" Blaze asked suspiciously.

"While the echidnas lived long lives, on average they did not live as long as the Guardians. They were a bit less egalitarian with distributing its life-extending powers in that respect than you are with the fruit of your kingdom," Tikal said.

"The people of your kingdom are immortal because of fruit?" Mighty asked in confusion.

"Sort of. I'll explain when it's my turn," Blaze promised.

"Wait…Knuckles is a Guardian. Is he immortal, too?" Amy asked.

"No," Knuckles said at the same time Tikal said "Yes." They blinked and looked at each other in surprise. "Wait, I'm immortal?" Knuckles asked.

"Well yes, how else did you think you've lived for centuries?" Tikal asked.

"I've lived for centuries?" Knuckles asked.

Tikal's eye twitched. "You didn't notice?"

"I've never been good at keeping track of time," Knuckles confessed. Everyone facepalmed.

"Wait… But if he's immortal, then…" Shadow glanced uncertainly at Rouge, who bit her lip, an equally dubious look on her face.

"So…I'm immortal. Huh. That's new. Well, not really, but its news to me," Knuckles said, not quite sure how to deal with this.

"I guess that means you're going to live forever, just like Shadow, then?" Sonic asked, intrigued.

"I suppose so," Knuckles said uncertainly. Shadow scowled briefly.

"Actually, he…ah, but that would be telling," Silver said enigmatically.

"Telling what?" Cream asked.

"Spoilers," Silver said.

"Oh, okay," the rabbit said.

"Wait… He's going to live forever?! But that's awful!" Amy protested.

Everyone stared at the pink hedgehog as if she were a blithering idiot. "Why would you say that?" Asked a confused Mighty.

"Yeah, living forever sounds awesome! I'd love to do it if I could," Charmy agreed.

"But if Knuckles lives forever, that means he'll outlive all of us, his best friends! He'll be all alone!" Amy wailed.

Knuckles perked up at this. He supposed that he should be upset and saddened at the prospect of one day losing his friends, but at the moment he was hard-pressed to think of a good reason why. "Oh, don't worry Amy," Knuckles said gruffly, trying to sound resolute and steadfast. "I managed before, I'm sure I'll manage again."

"And besides, he won't exactly be alone. I mean, I'll still be here," Shadow said.

"AND-ME," Omega said.

"And…ah, well, you'll understand on my turn," Rouge said.

"All alone!" Amy cried, ignoring Team Dark.

"And it's not exactly like Chaos or myself are going anywhere…" Tikal pointed out.

"ALL! ALONE!" Amy screamed.

"It will be hard, Amy," Knuckles said sternly, trying to sound as if he were acting tough to hide some inner pain. "But I can handle it. I am the Guardian of the Master Emerald. I have protected it by myself for years before, and if need be, I shall do it for years more to come."

"Then it's a good thing you won't have to," Tails said.

Knuckles froze. "Why, uh, why do you say that?"

Tails shrugged. "Well, even if you outlive us, there's always our kids."

Sonic snapped his fingers. "Hey, yeah! Once we grow too old to have adventures anymore, we can send our kids by to keep you company and have new adventures with their cool Uncle Knuckles! That's a great idea, Tails!"

"Oh, well, you don't need to go to all the trouble-" Knuckles stammered in a panic.

"And then, once our kids get too old, THEIR kids can take over! And then their kids, and then theirs, and then theirs, and so on, for generations to come!" Sonic continued, much to Knuckles' horror.

Amy gasped, eyes lighting up, clearly enamored by the idea. "That's so beautiful, Sonic! He'll be a part of our family's lives forever and ever and ever and ever!"

"And ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever…" Charmy droned, causing the echidna to pale.

"Isn't that wonderful, Mr. Knuckles? You'll never be lonely again! It'll be like we're always with you, through our descendants!" Cream chirped.

"Who will probably be almost exactly like us, because that's how these things seem to work for some reason," Vector said. He frowned. "Of course, we have to actually GET kids first…"

"So it'll be as if you never left me.… That's… That's great, guys… Really, it is… Thank you so much…" Knuckles said morosely, not looking particularly thankful.

"We're all going to have a wonderful future together!" Amy said. Knuckles tried not to cry.

"Actually, you'll… Wait, nevermind. Spoilers," Silver said vaguely. "Can we get back on track, please?"

Tikal nodded. "Certainly. So, as I said, the Master Emerald was protected by the Brotherhood, a group of immortal echidnas of the same bloodline."

"If they were all immortal, why weren't there more of them in the group?" Espio asked.

Tikal shrugged. "Some got tired of doing the same job for centuries on end and retired. Others died."

"How could they die if they were immortal?" Cream asked.

"Living forever does not always mean you can't be killed," Blaze said wisely.

Tikal nodded. "Indeed. As advanced and powerful as they were, they were not infallible, and had many enemies, even within their own ranks. As I'm sure you've gathered by now, they weren't exactly popular in the rest of the world."

"But still, so many of them… My father, and his father, and many other fathers before him… Tell me, what were they like?" Knuckles asked.

Tikal thought for a moment. "For the most part, they were kind of jerks, really. ESPECIALLY your dad."

Knuckles' shoulders sagged. "Of COURSE he was."

"Athair was a pretty decent guy, compared to the others," Tikal continued. "Kind of insane, but in a good way."

"There's a good kind of insanity?" Amy asked.

"Sort of. There's the kind of insanity where you're loopy and humorous and say wacky things that everyone either finds endearing or annoying or both, and then there's the kind of insanity where you want to murder people and rip out their spines and strangle them with them or something like that," Tails clarified.

"Ah," Amy said. "Yeah, that makes sense."

"In fact, your father, Locke, was so much of a jerk that your mother eventually divorced him right after she laid your egg and married an aristocrat named Wynmacher, who was also relatively decent as echidnas go. Certainly MUCH more bearable than your father," Tikal said.

"Ah, so I'm the product of a broken home as well! Wonderful!" Knuckles said bitterly. "What's next, did my dad beat my mom? Am I the product of rape? Is he even my biological father at all, or did my mom cheat on him with someone else?!"

"None of those, thankfully," Tikal assured Knuckles. "However, your father DID love your mother, or believed he did anyway, and her leaving him broke something inside of him. Something that led, ultimately, to the downfall of the echidna race."

Knuckles threw his hands up into the air. "And my dad's the guy who doomed our species! Of course he is! I'm not even surprised at this point!"

"WHAT-DID-HE-DO?" Omega asked eagerly.

"Attempted to use the Master Emerald for something it should never have been used for…" Tikal said darkly.

"What?" Sonic asked.

"Ascension."

…

Locke, a red echidna with white bushy eyebrows and goatee, white gloves, a tribal outfit, and brown boots, laughed insanely as his assistants scurried about the laboratory, the flashing green light from the Master Emerald, hooked up to a dizzying array of incredibly advanced machinery the likes of which even the greatest of scientific geniuses would have trouble fathoming the purpose of—as well as one stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling-shining over his face and making him look like a madman. "Yes… YES! Soon my master plan will bear fruit, and I shall have my revenge! Muhahahahaha!"

…

"Okay, he's a supervillain now? Don't you think you're exaggerating a bit?" Vector asked skeptically.

"Not really, no," Tikal said.

…

The doors to the lab burst open, and a group of echidnas stormed in. "Locke, you fool, what do you think you're doing?!" Demanded Thunderhawk, an elderly purple echidna with a blue vest, Brown boots, and a belt. "You can't just take the Master Emerald like that, and do… Whatever it is you're doing to it!"

"No, YOU are the fool, great-great-grandfather! You and the rest, who could have done what I'm about to do centuries ago, if only you had the VISION, and the RESOLVE!" Locke declared, pointing a finger at his ancestor dramatically.

"Wow, he sounds like you, Dimitri," Sojourner, a red echidna with green vest, boots, and gloves commented.

"So I can see. Did I REALLY sound like that?" Asked a cyborg echidna head inside a glass sphere, his very long partially-robotic dreadlocks sticking out through holes in the sphere like tentacles to provide him with support and locomotion.

"Pretty much, yeah," said Spectre, a black echidna wearing a cloak and helmet.

…

"Wait, wait, who's the head in a jar?" asked a confused Charmy.

"Oh, that's Knuckles' great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-uncle Dimitri, brother of Edmund," Tikal explained. "Thousands of years ago he and his brother had a falling-out when Edmund was chosen to guard the Master Emerald instead of him, so he formed a new society in the city of Necropolis called the Dark Legion, which focused more on technological advancement and science than the more theocratically-inclined Echidnaopolis, intending to claim the Emerald for themselves, return the Island to Earth, and conquer the world. After centuries of warfare, the Guardians defeated him, destroyed the Legion, and imprisoned his head in that sphere because they figured his incredible intellect and scientific prowess could be an asset to them."

"Oh," Charmy said.

"Well, there you go. Even MORE proof that all echidnas are inclined towards evil," Shadow commented. "Even the 'good guys' do something nasty to their enemies…granted, the bad ones can't be much better, if he actually thought calling his group the DARK LEGION based out of a placed called NECROPOLIS was a good idea. It's hard to get more blatantly evil than that. What, did he think he was a comic book or cartoon character or something?"

"Yeah, and 'Spectre' doesn't exactly sound like the name of a good guy, either," Rouge agreed.

"Neither does Shadow," Cream pointed out.

"Yes, but I'm not a hero, I'm an ANTI-hero," Shadow explained.

"Oh, right," the rabbit said.

"Your great-something uncle is an evil head in a jar? Wow, probably a good thing your family's not around anymore, Knux, reunions would probably be super-awkward," Sonic commented.

"That's kind of tactless, Sonic," Mighty said.

"But true," Sonic pointed out.

"Yeah, it is…this is so messed up," Knuckles groaned.

"For some reason, I'm reminded of Ix and the Nocturnus," Tails said. "Evil echidnas, obsessed with technology, looking and naming themselves in such a way to make it clear they're obviously bad guys…"

"Dimitri was inspired by them, and thought Ix and the Nocturnus might have been onto something," Tikal said. She frowned. "Or…was it the other way around?"

"The other way around? But the Nocturnus came first, didn't they?" Amy asked.

Tikal shrugged. "Well, yes, from YOUR perspective, but time doesn't flow as straight as it seems from your limited three-dimensional perspective…anyway…"

…

Sabre, a brown echidna with a blue tunic and a monocle, groaned. "Son, are you listening to yourself? I did NOT raise you to become a supervillain! I thought you were smarter than this!"

"I AM smarter than this! Smarter than all of you fools!" Locke boasted, laughing malevolently. "For if you were truly smart as I, you would have realized the benefits of what I'm doing long ago!"

"And what, precisely, ARE you doing, Locke?" Spectre asked patiently.

"Have you finally discovered a diet pill that actually works?! Grandson, if you've done that, you'll be the greatest genius of all time, and I'll kiss you on the lips!" proclaimed Athair, a wily-looking red-brown echidna wearing a tattered tribal outfit, beads in his dreadlocks, sandals, and a walking stick.

Locke blinked. "Ah, no, I'm afraid I haven't figured that out, sadly, but if I did I'd rather you didn't do that, Grandfather."

"Not even my genius could crack that code…oh well, at least I've lost a lot of weight now that I'm just a head in a jar," Dimitri said optimistically.

"No, I'm working on something far grander!" Locke declared. "Tell me, my brethren, for how many centuries have we floated across this filthy world, forced to look down on the inferior vermin infesting its surface?"

"Far too long, in my opinion," Thunderhawk grumbled.

"Well, we wouldn't have to look down on them so much if we weren't flying!" Athair pointed out cheerfully.

"That's what I said! But when _I_ said it, everyone said I was crazy and shunned me so I went off to form my own society, and now I'm stuck in a jar," Dimitri grumbled.

"What would you say if I told you I'd found a way that we would never have to look at or share the same world as those low-born ground pounders again?" Locke asked dramatically.

Sojourner sighed. "Locke, I despise those inferior groundlings just as much the next echidna, but we all know that genocide is not the answer."

"Didn't stop you from wiping out the dingoes," Dimitri pointed out.

"Those ugly mutts had it coming," Spectre said bluntly.

"I don't mind the surface-worlders so much, really," Athair commented. "I think they're actually quite interesting." Everyone ignored him.

"I'm not talking about wiping them all out," Locke insisted. "I'm talking about a way to leave them behind forever! According to legend, long ago Aurora-la and Enerjak ascended to godhood and became one with the Chaos Force… I believe that, through the use of the Master Emerald, I can replicate that same Ascension, and grant it to our entire species! We shall transcend physical existence, becoming immortal godlike beings! All the knowledge and power of the cosmos will be at our fingertips, or whatever the analog of fingertips for beings that have shed any need for physical bodies are, anyway! Nothing will be forbidden from us! And best of all, we won't have to breathe the same air as those filthy savages on the world below any longer!"

"What?! That's insane, son! You're insane!" Sabre cried in disbelief.

"Yeah, not even Dimitri ever tried anything this crazy!" Thunderhawk agreed.

"Yeah, that there's some real crazy talk," Dimitri agreed.

"Even I think that's crazy talk, and this morning I decided to eat toasted underwear for no reason whatsoever!" Athair added.

"How did it taste?" Sojourner asked.

"Surprisingly crunchy," Athair mused.

"It can work! I've done the math, and triple checked it!" Locke insisted. He gestured at a nearby computer. "You can look for yourself, and see that I know what I'm doing!"

"All right, I think we will," Spectre said, nodding to the others.

The echidnas (and one head in a jar) headed over to the computer and quickly started reviewing the data on it, murmuring to themselves as they pored over the complex formulas, equations, and circuit patterns meticulously detailed in their youngest member's notes. While they were doing so, Locke surreptitiously nodded at his assistants, who resumed working on the project, the Master Emerald's glow getting steadily brighter as the various machines it was hooked up to powered up and moved him ever closer to achieving his goal.

After several minutes, Sojourner took a step back, shaking his head in amazement. "I don't believe it… The numbers check out, he's accounted for everything… This could actually work!"

"Even so, there's no way we can let him go through with this!" Sabre protested.

"Why not?" Thunderhawk asked. "It's not like he's only going to ascend only himself or a select number of people, and the process doesn't look like it'll hurt anyone at all, even the groundlings! Our entire species, elevated to godhood… Is there really a good reason for us not to allow him to go through with this? As the echidnas responsible for guiding the development and future of our race, would we not be remiss in our duties if we stood in the way of this, the next step in our evolution as a people!"

"You're only saying that because you want to be a god!" Sabre snapped.

Thunderhawk shrugged. "Well, yeah, who wouldn't want to be one?"

"I don't want to be a God," Athair protested. "I quite like being a run of the mill quasi-immortal echidna. I might not be able to do some of my favorite activities if I were a God! And I have a loooot of favorite activities…" The others cringed in disgust.

"Athair, if you were a God, I'm pretty sure you could do just about anything you wanted," Sojourner said.

"How do you know that? Have YOU been a God? Do you know anyone else who's been one who can tell us what it's like? Did you get a hotline to Aurora when I wasn't looking?" Athair argued. "Plus, it sounds like we'll have to give up our bodies if we do this, and I LIKE our bodies! I enjoy having a physical existence! I take pleasure in eating, and exercise, and even having sex! Are you certain we can do all that if we ascend to the Chaos Force?"

…

"Just to be clear, while Athair's concerns were reasonable, he was completely wrong," Tikal added. "I've ascended and given up physical existence, and that certainly hasn't stopped me from doing all the things I used to love back when I was mortal. If anything, it's _enhanced_ the experience."

"So, is this something we should look into, then?" asked an intrigued Tails.

"Could be fun, experiencing a whole new state of being…" Sonic mused. "I'll bet there's all sorts of awesome adventures we could have on the astral plane!"

"Yeah, it's pretty awesome up there…" Tikal agreed. "Still, if you must pursue it, I would not recommend taking the same path Locke did. It… Didn't end well…"

…

"He actually has a good point," Thunderhawk conceded reluctantly. "I wouldn't mind being a God, but not if it means giving up sex!" The other Guardians murmured, and nodded in agreement.

"Oh yes, because not being able to have sex is SO terrible, why, it's not like you know someone who already doesn't have a body and so can't have any sort of real intercourse, and yet seems to have found other ways to occupy himself without getting bogged down by carnal desires," Dimitri grumbled.

"That's a good point, actually," Sojourner said. "Dimitri can't do any of that stuff anymore, but he seems to be all right for the most part, albeit a little bitter, but then again, who wouldn't be if they were just a head stuck in a jar? Maybe this wouldn't be so bad…"

"I can't believe we're actually debating this!" Cried the incredulous Sabre. "We can't let him go through with this! It… It goes against everything we stand for! Our traditions, our culture!"

"Traditions and culture have to change sooner or later, or else become obsolete," Spectre pointed out.

"And who cares about any of that stuff if it means we get immortality and absolute power and knowledge? Seems like a fair trade to me!" Thunderhawk agreed.

"Our civilization has existed and advanced for thousands of years… Perhaps we have finally reached the Singularity, and are ready to move on to the next stage," Sojourner said optimistically. "Every civilization that lasts this long reaches this point sooner or later, and they can choose to either evolve to the next level or else be destroyed. And I for one don't want to wind up like the LAST two great echidna civilizations!" The others nodded in agreement.

"I don't believe this…" Said the horrified Sabre. "You're ALL just saying that because you want to be gods!"

"Well, duh," Thunderhawk said. "I thought that was obvious."

"It's all right, Dad, just go with the flow," Locke said, patting his father on the back. "It'll all be worth it in the end, you'll see!"

"Hold on… Wait, wait just a second… Something doesn't seem right here…" Dimitri murmured, narrowing his eyes. His dreadlock tendrils shot forward and started rapidly typing on a keyboard, and reams of data started streaming by on the monitor, moving faster than most eyes could see, but Dimitri was a cyborg, and so able to process information at speeds far beyond those of his more flesh and blood kindred. "Locke, if I'm reading this right, your plan is basically to lock onto the DNA of every echidna on the island, using the blood samples on file on the central hospital computers, and then using the Master Emerald to mass teleport them to a higher plane of existence using a modified form of Chaos Control?"

"That's right!" Locke said, swelling with pride. "Brilliant, isn't it?"

"Well, yes, except for one thing…" Dimitri said with a frown. "It seems a bit too complicated the way you've done it. If it were me, I would've simply programmed the machines to just target everyone with a trace of echidna DNA in them, or set some kind of all-inclusive radius for the Chaos Control encircling the entire island. Instead, you have a massive list of echidnas to be targeted. One too massive for me to assume you're just picking and choosing who will be teleported via some specific criteria, but even so, not only does that seem rather inefficient, there's always a chance you might miss someone. Let me check it against the main hospital records, just to be safe."

Locke suddenly looked a little nervous. "I assure you, I didn't miss anyone, I made absolutely sure to use the DNA from every living echidna on record, there's no need for you to go to the effort-"

"Too late, just finished," Dimitri said smugly. "There are advantages to having most of your brain replaced by a computer… Aha! Just as I thought DID! You did miss someone… A certain aristocrat by the name of Wynmacher!" He paused. "Wait, Wynmacher…isn't that…"

"The current husband of Locke's ex-wife Lara-Le?" Sojourner said as he and the rest of the Brotherhood slowly turned to glare at their youngest member. "Yes, I do believe he is."

Locke laughed nervously. "I assure you, it's not what you think."

"Oh good, so you didn't set in motion this scheme to transcend the entire echidna race to godhood EXCEPT for Wynmacher just so you could get Lara-Le to yourself? Phew, that's a relief," Athair said.

Locke swallowed. "In that case, yes, it's exactly what you think."

"Of all the stupid, selfish, petty, pigheaded things!" Thunderhawk snapped. "And I should know, because I've done a lot of those! Really, Locke? Really?!"

"Locke, I know you took the divorce badly, but isn't this a bit excessive?!" Sojourner demanded. "She's just one mortal woman! You can easily find others, they're a dime a dozen!"

"Sometimes literally, depending on the brothel," Thunderhawk added.

"Those poor girls," Athair said sympathetically. "They're worth far more than that."

"Yes, a more reasonable way of dealing with something like this would be just killing Wynmacher, framing someone else, and exploiting Lara-Le's grief to win her heart back! This is just ridiculous!" Spectre agreed.

Athair blinked. "That's reasonable?"

"Compared to this it is!" Spectre snapped.

"Fair enough," Athair conceded.

"Do you speak from experience, or…" Sojourner started.

The eldest Guardian coughed. "That's, ah, nothing you really need to know about."

"I never had to bother with anything like this back when I had a body. When I was in charge of the Dark Legion, I had a massive harem of gorgeous females willing to do my every bidding, and I dearly loved every single one of them," Dimitri said fondly. He sighed. "Those were the days…"

"None of you fools understand!" Locke yelled. "None of you possibly could, too absorbed in your duty and private pastimes to understand the depths of how I felt for Lara! That bastard Wynmacher took her from me, and my unborn son, and now I will do whatever it takes to make her mine again, even if it means removing our entire species from this world and leaving that unworthy wretch the last echidna on Earth! Lara and I will be together again, and that thief will die alone, the last of his kind! Wahahahahaha!"

"Locke, this is madness! Even Dimitri never went that far!" Sojourner protested.

"That's right, I didn't," Dimitri said. "I did a lot of bad things, but nothing nearly as petty as this… Especially because it could mean the destruction of our entire civilization if we allow Locke to go through with it!"

"What? But we did the math! I thought we agreed that if we let him do this, it would most likely work!" Said the startled Thunderhawk.

"Yes, if he were to do it to our ENTIRE species! But he intends to do it to our entire species MINUS one person, which throws all the previous calculations off! I've re-crunched the numbers to account for this new variable. If he were to attempt to ascend our entire species, there's a 95% chance of success… But if he tries to ascend everyone EXCEPT for Wynmacher, there is only a _5%_ chance of success, and a 95% chance of CATASTROPHIC FAILURE!" Dimitri announced.

"What?! How could the addition or removal of a single person possibly make that big a difference?!" Asked the startled Sabre.

"Well, it is said that one person in the right place can make all the difference in the world," Sojourner said.

"The math involved is extremely complicated. Only a genius like me or an utter madman could possibly understand all the intricacies and variables involved," Dimitri said.

"He's right," Athair said after a moment's thought. "It won't work, not like this!"

"Well, that's good enough for me. Locke, either shut this thing down or add Wynmacher's DNA to your list this instant, I won't ask you again!" Spectre said.

"No," Locke said.

Spectre was utterly dumbfounded. "Did… Did you just say 'no?!'" He asked in disbelief.

"That's right," Locke said.

Spectre glared balefully. "I am the oldest echidna alive-"

"Ahem," Dimitri coughed.

Spectre amended his statement. "The oldest _full_ echidna alive, leader of the Brotherhood of Guardians, and most importantly, your great-great-great-grandfather! You don't say 'no' to me!" The elder echidna said indignantly.

"Well, I just did! I won't stop, no matter what any of you say! Even if Aurora or the Ancient Walkers were to appear right before me at this very instant, and tell me to stop, I wouldn't!" Locke declared.

…

"And let me tell you, there wasn't a time I wished I had pretended to be Aurora all those centuries ago, or still had the ability to project myself, more than I did at that very moment," Tikal said morosely to her shocked audience.

…

"But, son, you heard Dimitri! There's only a 5% chance of success!" Sabre protested.

"A 5% chance is better than none," Locke said resolutely. "I have faith that the power of love shall triumph over something as pointless or capricious as mere probability!"

"Wow, I'm crazy, but this is a whole new level of madness," Athair said, shaking his head in disbelief.

"But you'll destroy us all!" Sojourner cried.

"That's a risk I'm willing to take!" Locke said, a determined––and crazed-look on his face.

…

"Okay, I'm a firm believer in the power of love, but even I think this is ridiculous," Amy said.

"Really? Because this actually sounds a lot like something you would do," Shadow said.

"What, possibly wipe out an entire species just because there's a slim chance it would win me Sonic's heart?!" Amy asked incredulously. "Do you REALLY think that sounds like me?!"

"Yes," everyone said bluntly.

Amy spluttered. "That's… I…" Her shoulders slumped. "Okay, yeah, that DOES sound kind of like something I would do…is there something wrong with me?"

"Yes," everyone said bluntly again. She glared at them.

Vector whistled. "Man, I've run into guys who've been through a bad breakup before and were driven to do something absolutely insane because of it––they're often involved in cases we take––but this guy really takes the cake!"

"When Mother and Father divorced, Father didn't take it too well, but he certainly didn't try to do anything like this!" Cream agreed. She hesitated. "Well, not at FIRST…"

"Your father being that human you mentioned before, right?" Blaze asked.

Cream nodded. "Uh-huh. He's-"

"That can wait until your turn, Cream, we're learning about Knuckles now," Silver reminded the rabbit. She nodded apologetically and remained quiet.

"Knux, your dad was INSANE," said the incredulous Sonic.

"Of course he was," Knuckles said angrily. "Not like there could be anything nice or pleasant or NORMAL in my family, given that I'm an echidna, apparently the evilest and/or dickish species in existence!"

"What about Athair? He didn't seem that bad," Rouge asked.

"No, but he's insane," Knuckles pointed out.

"There are worse things a member of your family could be, but I concede the point," the bat said reluctantly.

"Still, the science involved sounds fascinating… A part of me wouldn't mind getting a chance to study it, no matter how dangerous it might be…" Tails said thoughtfully.

"None of it is still around. It's for the best," Tikal said.

"So I'm guessing Locke's insane plan backfired and wiped out his entire species?" Mighty guessed.

"You're getting ahead of me. What happened was this…" Tikal continued.

…

"Locke, we aren't going to let you get away with this!" Dimitri declared. He blinked. "Huh, so that's what it's like to be on the other side of that."

Thunderhawk grinned and stepped forward, cracking his knuckles. "If you won't shut it down willingly, then we'll just have to MAKE you shut it down!"

Locke burst into laughter. "You fools really don't get it, do you? Do you REALLY think I'd have let you in here and allowed you to look at my work if I thought there was ANY chance whatsoever I believed you could stop it? I set the final steps in motion 15 minutes ago! Even if I WANTED to stop it, at this point, I couldn't! There's no stopping it now! One way or another, whatever's going to happen is going to happen! Bwahahahaha!"

The echidnas gasped. "No!" Sojourner cried.

"Son, how could you?!" Sabre demanded. "Do you realize what you've done?!"

"Raised our species to our rightful place in the heavens and ensured that Lara will be mine forever!" Locke declared.

"Or killed us all, you mad fool!" Dimitri shouted.

"Or that," Locke admitted.

"Hey, where did Athair go?" Thunderhawk wondered, suddenly noticing the most…eccentric of their order had vanished.

"There's no time for that now, we have to do something!" Specter said. "Maybe if we smashed the Emerald-"

"We can't smash the Master Emerald! We are its Guardians, it's our sacred duty to protect it! To harm our charge would be absolutely unthinkable!" Sabre protested.

…

Everyone looked at Knuckles. He flushed. "Yeah, yeah…" He grumbled.

…

"We can't, it's surrounded by a force field so strong, and the systems controlling it protected by firewalls so complex, by the time I would be able to crack them, it would be too late to do anything," Dimitri said.

"Not to mention that, in its current state, if we broke the Emerald, the amount of energy released could destroy the entire island, if not the world!" Sojourner agreed.

"Which, last time I checked, is exactly what we DON'T want to happen," Spectre said. "Dimitri, what if we got Wynmacher's DNA onto the list? Will that fix things? It might not stop the ascension process, but it should also keep everyone from being annihilated, right?"

"It's too late. The system is locked. It would take far too long for me to hack it, and make any changes, and that's time we simply don't have," Dimitri said remorsefully.

"But… But we can't do NOTHING! We're the Brotherhood of Guardians! It's our job to _stop_ stuff like this!" Thunderhawk protested.

"Well, this time, doing nothing is exactly what you HAVE to do!" Locke said with an evil gloat. "You are too late! Behold, it begins!"

The Master Emerald's glow, which had steadily been increasing all this time, was now so brilliant that everything in the room seem to be dyed in a green hue. The giant jewel began to pulse, its light flickering faster and faster, as the room began to tremble. Arcs of green electricity started crackling all over the place and causing everyone's fur to stand on end. Locke laughed maniacally. "Yes…yes! It's happening! It's really happening! Soon, Lara and I shall be reunited forever in another world! Gyahahahahahaha!"

"Yeah, in the AFTERLIFE!" Thunderhawk snapped. "Come on guys, we've got to do something! If we can't stop this, maybe we could get out into the city, start an evacuation-"

"No," Dimitri said solemnly. "We are too late. I don't think we'll even be able to get far from this room before whatever happens happens." He sighed. "For all the evil things I've done over the years, I've always had our species' best interests at heart. I wanted us to take our rightful place as rulers of the world. This… This is far worse than anything I could ever have dreamed of, even in my worst moments." He laughed bitterly. "To think that in the end, the end of our civilization would not be caused by me, or any of my followers, but one of you lot, who opposed me so many times and swore to defend our kind at all costs. Isn't the irony delicious?"

Spectre shook his head sadly. "The members of our family have watched over the Master Emerald, and the people of Echidnaopolis for thousands of years… And now, it seems that we have failed them in their hour of greatest need. We are undone by the hands of one of our own… You're right, Dimitri. It'd be hilarious if it weren't so tragic."

"Well," Sojourner said with a faint smile. "If we're going to die, at least we'll die together, as a family." He frowned. "Except for Athair. Wonder where he went off to…"

"Probably to do something stupid. Anyway, if we're going to die, I'm going to make damn well sure that bastard goes first!" Thunderhawk snarled, clenching his fists. "I don't care if he's family, he's going down!"

"Oh, son…" Saber said sadly. "What have you done?"

"LARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Locke screamed, spreading his arms wide as if to embrace the light of the Master Emerald, unaware that Thunderhawk's hands were reaching out to grab his neck.

Outside, the people of Echidnaopolis looked around in alarm as the entire island started to shake. There was a blinding flash of green light, and then…

And then…

…

The floating land mass that was Angel Island drifted blissfully through the heavens, continuing to throw up a giant middle finger to the laws of physics and that bitch gravity as it had for the last several thousand years. On a high hill at the center of the island rested an ancient shrine, seven columns in varying states of disrepair surrounding a central dais, the stone weathered by countless years of exposure to the elements. A gigantic green brilliant cut gemstone slowly hovered on its tip in the center of this dais, utterly pristine and without flaw, despite also being exposed to the elements for ages beyond remembering, a faint, warm glow emanating from its center.

Nestled near the base of the gemstone was a small white egg. The egg shook slightly. A crack formed in its surface, followed by another, and another…

…

"And you know the rest," Tikal concluded.

"Whoa. Full circle," Vector said.

"That's it? But that can't be it!" Knuckles protested. "What happened to everyone?"

"Were they transported to a higher plane of existence?" Cream asked.

"Yes, if by 'transported to a higher plane of existence,' you mean died. Because that's what they did. Died. Pretty much all of them," Tikal said bluntly.

"They died?!" Amy cried.

"Well, yes, what did you expect? Dimitri said there'd be a 95% chance of catastrophic failure, and that's exactly what happened," Tikal said.

"Well, yeah, but whenever there's like a million to one odds against something happening, that thing is almost guaranteed to happen!" Sonic protested.

"Which isn't how probability should work, actually," Tails commented.

"I'm fairly certain that only applies for heroes, beloved," Blaze said. "And Locke was CERTAINLY not one of those."

"Jeez…" Sonic whispered, shaking his head in disbelief.

"Millions of people wiped out due to a selfish act of love…is…is that going to be me one day?" a troubled Amy worried.

"Probably," Charmy said.

"Charmy!" Espio hissed.

"What? It probably is!" Charmy said.

"Well, yes, but you didn't need to _say_ it like that," the chameleon grumbled. Amy gulped nervously.

"I'm sorry, Knuckles. I know you wanted to know about your past, but never dreamed it could possibly be this bad. I can't even _imagine_ what you must be going through right now," Rouge said sympathetically, putting a hand on his shoulder. "There have been a few somewhat nasty people in my own family's history, but nothing _this_ bad."

"What about-" Shadow started.

"We don't talk about her," Rouge said coldly. Shadow nodded in understanding.

"My father… All those people… Just because my mother left him?!" Knuckles cried in horror.

"I'm afraid so," Tikal said sadly.

"Dammit, Dad…how could you?" Knuckles started to cry. "All my life I wanted to know more about my past, my people, where I came from… Now I know, and I wish I'd never wondered to begin with!"

"Knux…" Sonic said sadly, looking at the echidna with pity and empathy, like the rest…

Everyone except Shadow, that is. The black hedgehog snorted. "I thought you were stronger than that, echidna. You disappoint me."

"Shads, that's not-" Sonic started, shocked, but the black hedgehog shushed him.

"Quiet, blue hedgehog. This is something he has to hear," Shadow said sternly.

Knuckles blinked. "Huh? What are you talking about?"

"So what if you're a member of a species which has, throughout history, been almost predominantly evil or at the very least colossal jerks? So what if your father was a madman who wiped out his entire species in a fit of pique? Have you forgotten that I, too, have such a heritage?" Shadow said, pointing to himself. "Half of my genetic material comes from the evil overlord of an alien race, which destroyed entire planets to sustain themselves. My other creator went insane and tried to destroy the world, using ME as a weapon to do so! My only other living relative is the greatest madman and terrorist in recent memory! But have I left that define me? No! I chose to forge my own path, and define my identity with my own two hands! I am Shadow the Hedgehog, because that is who I CHOOSE to be, not because others tell me to be!" He pointed at Knuckles. "Now tell me, echidna… Who are you? A member of a wicked race? The son of a genocidal maniac? The Guardian of the Master Emerald? A hero? A friend? A lover? An ally? Choose! WHO ARE YOU?"

Knuckles looked at the black hedgehog in surprise, and then frowned, his brow furrowing in deep thought. "I… I am Knuckles the Echidna. I am the last of the echidnas… The Guardian of the Master Emerald… Boyfriend of Rouge, friend of Sonic and Tails, and many others… I… I am a hero. This… This is who I am, who I _choose_ to be!"

Shadow shook the echidna's hand as the others applauded. "A pleasure to meet you Knuckles. I think we're going to be, if not exactly friends, at the very least close allies."

"Thanks, Shadow. I needed that," Knuckles said gratefully.

"Yes, I imagine you did," Shadow said smugly.

"That was beautiful!" Cream sniffed as Rouge hugged Knuckles and gave him a big kiss, and Sonic patted him proudly on the back.

"Yeah, it was!" Amy agreed.

"As sweet as all that was, though, there's still something I don't quite understand…if the echidnas had such a massive civilization, which was wiped out so suddenly, then how come there isn't more of a trace of its eradication?" Tails asked. "I mean, we've BEEN to Angel Island. There are some ruins, yeah, but nothing like a giant abandoned city.… Or a big crater or anything else like that! You'd expect that sort of thing, wouldn't you?"

Mighty nodded in agreement. "And how did the Master Emerald get from some laboratory to that old altar? And how the heck did Knuckles survive, anyway?"

"Hey yeah, why wasn't he killed like the others?" Vector wondered.

"I'm getting to that," Tikal said. "As for why there's no sign that Echidnaopolis ever existed… The blast of corrupted Chaos Control that resulted from Locke's deranged scheme destroyed the city and its people so thoroughly that they were removed from existence itself, as if they had never even come into being in the first place. That is why there are no ruins of a great echidna metropolis… Because, from your more limited, linear perspective, it was never constructed to begin with. Which is why the Emerald was returned to its altar, thanks to the shift in reality, it never actually left."

"…Whoa," Sonic said.

"The Master Emerald can do that?!" Charmy cried.

"Well, given that it's a singular artifact that simultaneously exists throughout all of time and space, I suppose it _does_ have the power to do something like that… Still, the very thought of it being able to DO something like that is rather terrifying," Tails commented. He frowned. "But wait, then why weren't the dingoes, or any of the other races the echidnas wiped out, restored if the people who made them extinct never existed?"

"Timey-wimey ball," Tikal said.

"Oh, okay then," the fox said.

"I had no idea Chaos Control was CAPABLE of such a power…" Shadow murmured. "Though I suppose it would explain why there's so little historical record of the echidnas after the Chaos or Argus Incidents, or why there isn't more mention of a civilization flying around on a floating island and wiping out entire species outside of stories…could be some sort of subconscious, racial memory? Some kind of psycho-temporal echo? Intriguing…"

"SUDDENLY, I-AM-CONFLICTED," Omega said. "WHILE-THE-POWER-OF-ABSOLUTE-DESTRUCTION-ON-SUCH-A-LEVEL-IS-VERY-APPEALING…IF-YOU-DESTROY-SOMETHING-SO-THOROUGHLY-THAT-IT-IS-AS-IF-IT-NEVER-EXISTED, WHAT-PROOF-DO-YOU-HAVE-THAT-YOU-EVER-DESTROYED-ANYTHING-AT-ALL?"

"Knuckles, I think you might want to try and keep a closer eye on that big gemstone of yours from now on," Rouge said nervously. "And for that matter… I don't think I'm ever going to try and steal it again. I mean, it's PROBABLY never going to do anything like that again, but…"

Knuckles nodded in understanding. "Yes, better safe than sorry. After all, there's nothing to say that Eggman or any other villain might not try to do something like my father did, and possibly erase the entire planet from existence or destroy the universe!" He shook his head sorrowfully. "All this time, I thought I was placed on this world to protect the Master Emerald from those who would misuse its power for evil… Now I see it's the other way around. I have to protect the WORLD from the Emerald's power… To think, all those years sitting on that island, guarding that jewel, and I never knew that it was responsible for the extinction of my entire species… I don't think I'll ever be able to look at it the same way again…"

"Knux, I know in the past you've refused our offers to help you better protect the Emerald, but now… Now that you know the truth…" Sonic said.

"Now that I know just what it's really capable of? Yes, I think it's time I finally swallowed my stubborn pride and asked for your help. Any assistance you can lend me to make sure that rock of death is never stolen or broken again will be more than welcome," Knuckles said gratefully.

"I'm glad to hear you finally say that, Knuckles!" Tikal said approvingly. "But remember, ultimately, the Emerald is not to blame. It is, ultimately, just a tool that can be used for good or for evil, and your father, unfortunately, did not use its power the way he should have. You may make sure it is never used again, or you can try to find a way to safely harness its power for the good of all. The choice, in the end, is yours to make as the last Guardian."

"Wonder if they'll ever finish that game…" Vector muttered.

"I heard it's supposed to be coming out in a year or so," Espio said.

"Yeah, they've been saying stuff like that for years! I'm not gonna get my hopes up just yet," the crocodile said cynically. "And after all, just because something's been in development for ages doesn't necessarily mean it'll be GOOD when it's actually released."

"The Duke will never recover," Charmy said solemnly.

"Thank you, Tikal. Even so, I'm not sure the world will ever be ready for that much power…" Knuckles said.

"It will be, actually," Silver said. "In the FYOO-CHURR, we…ah, but you don't need to hear that right now. Tikal, thank you for coming in explaining all this, but there is one question left to answer: why was Knuckles spared, while the rest of his species was destroyed?"

"A very good question," Tikal said. "You will recall that in Echidnaopolis's last moments, Athair was mysteriously absent from among his fellow Guardians?"

"Yeah, what's with that?" Sonic wondered.

"Probably ran away, like a coward," Espio said dismissively.

"No, the Guardians were many things, but they _weren't_ cowards," Tikal said. She paused. "Well, Athair wasn't, anyway. When he realized that there was no way to stop Locke's experiment, he ran off to try and evacuate as many citizens as he could, including Lara, Wynmacher, and Knuckles' egg. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts, they were unable to evade the corrupted Chaos Control. After all, it was specifically targeted for their DNA, along with the DNA of everyone else in the city, and due to how badly Locke had screwed things up, not even Wynmacher would be wholly spared. Fortunately, at the last minute, they were spared by literal divine intervention."

"A deus ex machina? Really?" Tails asked skeptically.

"Well, why not? Those happen to us often enough," Sonic said reasonably. Tails grunted, but reluctantly conceded.

"Seeing that the last vestige of her species was about to be erased from the world forever, the goddess Aurora beseeched the Ancient Walkers to do something," Tikal explained.

"You mentioned those guys before… Who are they?" Mighty asked.

"Probably a group of incredibly powerful, incredibly ancient beings predating recorded history that even the gods must bow to," Blaze theorized.

"What makes you say that?" Cream asked.

Blaze shrugged. "I've run into that sort of thing before."

"Blaze is correct," Tikal said. "Long before Aurora ascended, long before others like her or I transcended physicality and became one with the Chaos Force, the Ancient Walkers were already there. Nobody knows just where they came from or how long they have existed. They were there before even the eldest of those like me were born on this world, long before any known civilization came into being. They may be older than all life on this world, older than the planet itself, if not the universe! They have watched nations rise and fall, species come into being and go extinct. They have absolute mastery of the Chaos Force, and some wonder if perhaps they are the first to be able to use the Force, if not the Force itself personified somehow. All we know is that they are ancient, mighty, and wise beyond all understanding, their minds and motives so unfathomable and inscrutable and beyond comprehension that even the eldest and most learned of those who dwell in the planes above cannot understand them."

"Spooky," Charmy said.

"The Professor found a few references to entities like that a few times in the writings of several ancient cultures…" Shadow recalled. "Nothing very specific or definite, and no actual depiction of such creatures, as if whatever they were was so powerful and beyond mortal understanding that nobody dared to try and describe them for fear of drawing their tension. The closest he ever found were some masks and cave paintings dating back millions of years to _before_ anyone should have been around to make them."

"Well, that's creepy," Amy said with a shiver.

Blaze nodded. "Yes, that about fits what I'd expected."

"And what did these paintings look like?" Rouge asked.

"Dinosaurs wearing masks," Shadow said.

"…Huh. I was expecting more eyes. And tentacles," the bat said, somewhat disappointed.

"Why do so many eldritch beings have those, anyway?" Vector complained.

"Maybe because we instinctively find those things creepy, so they take that form intentionally to cause us as much discomfort as possible?" Tails suggested.

"…Huh. That could do it," the crocodile admitted.

"And why do they do that, anyway? Why are so many interdimensional cosmic beings such assholes?" Espio wondered.

"Because the nice ones don't want to bother us since they know we can't really gaze upon them without going mad?" Cream suggested.

"…That is also plausible," the chameleon admitted.

"And are THESE guys something we should be worried about?" Asked the concerned Sonic.

"No, they rarely if ever feel the need to intervene in the affairs of the lower planes… Or any planes at all, for that matter," Tikal admitted. "For the most part, they seem content to just watch events unfold and do…whatever it is that they do. However, know this: if, for whatever reason, they WERE to feel you warranted some kind of intervention on their part… Well, let's just say you'd better hope their interest in you is benign, because if it isn't…"

"I've handled almighty cosmic beings before," Sonic said, unconcerned.

"Even the eldest and most powerful entity you've vanquished is but a babe compared to the Walkers," Tikal said seriously. "They are not to be trifled with. Ever. For I doubt even the fastest thing alive can find any shelter in any world that would protect him from their wrath."

"…Duly noted," Sonic said after a moment.

"If you were to anger them, you could seek shelter in my world, beloved," Blaze said, her eyes narrowing. "If they want you, they would have to go through me first."

"They wouldn't have to. You wouldn't even be a speedbump to them," Tikal said.

The royal feline grunted. "Perhaps…perhaps not…my beloved is not the only one who's battled horrors beyond time…"

"Incidentally, exactly what WOULD warrant such attention from them?" Tails asked.

"I don't actually know myself," Tikal admitted. "While Aurora WAS able to convince them to do something, even she has no idea what it is she said that made them decide to help out. It is possible that they'd already decided to do something anyway, and nothing she said had any bearing on the matter whatsoever. As I said before… They are inscrutable, unknowable, and utterly ineffable."

"So they DID do something? What?" Knuckles asked.

"Aurora, much like myself and many of the other beings who dwell in the higher realms, had pretty much given up on the echidna race as a species after their centuries of atrocities, misuse of power, and utter decadence. However, when Aurora saw Athair selflessly risking his life to save as many people as he could, she realized that maybe there was hope yet for our cursed race. Unable to do anything herself, she asked the Ancient Walkers to intervene, to use their mastery of the Chaos Force to mitigate Locke's grave error, to save as many of her former species as they could," Tikal said.

"And did they?" Cream asked.

"…Yes and no," Tikal said. "While certainly it would've been within their power to take control of the failed Chaos Control and use it to transport the entire echidna race anywhere in the multiverse ––even to the planes we resided in, if they so chose––for whatever reason, they chose to save a fraction of the population and let the rest be destroyed. I do not understand why they did this, or the criteria they used to choose who would live and who would die, for while they spared many virtuous souls, they also chose to save many who were corrupt and wicked. Some of them were transported to other dimensions, while others came to the higher planes, and found themselves in the service of the Walkers. I do not know whether to envy or pity them, for those whom the Walkers selected to be their messengers are perhaps the only beings save the Walkers themselves who can possibly understand how those ancient beings minds work… but I'm not certain if that knowledge is something any lesser mind, even one whose consciousness has been opened to the vast wonders of infinity, can truly bear without breaking." She shrugged. "On the other hand, Athair seemed okay the last time I talked to him, but that might just be because he's already insane so it didn't bother him so much."

"My great-grandfather still lives?" Knuckles asked excitedly.

"Well… That depends on your definition of 'lives,' but yes, he's still out there, doing the will of the Walkers, whatever that may be," Tikal said. "He stops by to chat now and then and ask how you're doing. He's funny."

"He asks about me? What… What does he think of me?" Knuckles asked.

"That you're a big goofball, but he loves you anyway," Tikal said.

"Awww, that's sweet!… I think," Amy said.

Heartened by this, Knuckles asked, "And what of my mother? What… What happened to her?"

Tikal smiled. "She still lives as well. The Walkers transported her to another dimension, where she's settled down with Wynmacher. They have a child named Knecapeon. They're quite happy, and before you ask, no, I can't take you there or tell you how to get there. Dimensionally speaking, it's very, _very_ far away."

"That's all right," Knuckles said, smiling in relief. "Just knowing that she's still alive and happy is enough for me… And a son… That means… I have a little brother! Did you hear that, guys?! I have a brother!"

"That's wonderful, Mr. Knuckles!" Cream said.

"Yeah, that's… Wait…Knecapeon? That sounds like…" Abruptly, Sonic burst into laughter. "Knuckles, your little brother is named KNEECAPS! Hahahahaha!"

"Wh-what?! No he isn't, he's named Knecapeon, a proud and…noble…oh, who am I kidding? His name is Kneecaps. What was my mother thinking?!" Knuckles groaned as the others started laughing as well.

"Considering that she named you Knuckles, apparently she has a thing for body parts," Espio commented.

"We don't know that, she might've named him something else, and he named himself Knuckles," Tails said.

"No, actually, she did name him Knuckles," Tikal spoke up.

"Ah. I stand corrected," Tails said.

"As hilarious as that is, that still leaves us with one question… Why is KNUCKLES still here?" Mighty asked. "Why isn't he in another dimension, or serving these spooky dinosaur mask guys?"

"First of all, don't call them spooky dinosaur mask guys. They might not like it," Tikal warned the armadillo. "I'm not even sure those _are_ masks, they might be their faces…"

"Oh, like in the _Masque of Red Death_ or _King in Yellow_?" Tails asked.

Tikal nodded. "Yes, like that. Second of all… I don't actually know why Knuckles was left behind."

"Huh? You don't?" Knuckles asked in surprise.

Tikal shook her head. "For whatever reason, the Ancient Walkers decided to leave you on Angel Island. I do not know why, and I do not believe I will ever know. Remember, their reasons for doing anything are almost impossible for lesser beings to fathom. All I know is that, shortly after everything was over, Athair came to me, told me that you still remained on this world, and asked me to do my best to make sure you grew up to be a good man and protector of the Master Emerald. He didn't say why, only that it was very important that I do so. And… I did my best to follow his wishes. I'm aware that I was not perhaps the best parental figure I could've been, but I tried, and I believe that you have indeed become a good person, your gullibility, short temper, and myriad other flaws aside. Even if you aren't quite as good at protecting the Emerald, you are CERTAINLY a better man than your father was, or many of the other Guardians, and for that, I'm very proud of you, just as your great grandfather is, and your mother certainly would be."

" Well… Thank you, that's good to know, but…" Knuckles said uncertainly.

"It is not the answer you were hoping for," Tikal concluded.

"Yeah," the echidna said apologetically.

"It IS a little lacking," Shadow agreed.

"There isn't anything you can tell us, Tikal? Any hint, any clue, anything at all?" Sonic asked.

"I cannot give you those because I do not have any," Tikal said apologetically. "All I have are conjectures, and guesswork, and I cannot honestly say how accurate any of those are."

"Tell us anyway, it's better than nothing," Vector said.

Tikal sighed. "Very well. There are several possibilities I can think of. One is that the Walkers felt that the Master Emerald still needed a living Guardian, and chose Knuckles, since his bloodline is strongly connected to the Emerald's power, and perhaps they felt that not only would it give a sense of continuity, but since he would be starting fresh, with no preconceptions or biases shaped by his society, he might turn out better than his father did. Or they might have left him behind out of spite, to bear the sins of his father for so flagrantly violating his duty and abusing the power of Chaos. Or it might even be some kind of test, to see if it is possible for a lone echidna to reject his species' inherent vices and prove that his kind has a future, and possibly determine if the other echidnas can one day return to Earth or not." She shrugged. "It could be all of these. It could be none. As I've said, I really don't know."

"I see," Knuckles said, trying to hide his disappointment.

"But Tikal, didn't you say you saw time differently than we do?" Sonic asked. "So couldn't you, you know, just look into the future or something…?"

Amy gasped. "Oh! Oh! And tell me when I'm going to marry Sonic, too!"

"I'm afraid it's not as simple as all that," Tikal said apologetically. "I can see many, _many_ possible futures, and at this moment there is no telling which one is the one that will actually happen. I see futures where Knuckles is reunited with the rest of his species, and futures where he is not. I see futures where he starts a family and sires a new breed of echidnas, and others where he dies alone, his race going extinct with him. The future is, as ever, constantly in flux." Silver opened his mouth to correct her, and she sharply said, "Whatever you're about to say, it's wrong. You may be a time traveler, but you still live INSIDE of time. The illusion of linearity and causality that grants you is one that I, as a transcendent entity, do not have the luxury of humoring for myself. And besides, if the future WASN'T constantly in flux, then there would be no reason for you to constantly be coming back here, now would there?"

"…Fair point," the psychic said reluctantly.

"That's a pretty diverse range of possibility futures," Espio commented.

Tikal shrugged. "In an infinite multiverse, all things are possible."

"Even Amy marrying Sonic, apparently," Mighty joked.

"Hey!" the pink hedgehog snapped as Sonic laughed and high-fived his old friend.

"Still, if there is even a possibility that I might one day be reunited with my mother and the rest of my kind… A possibility that I can create a new future for my species, one free of the countless sins of our past… then that is something for me to strive for, to hope for," Knuckles said. "No matter how slim such a future might be of ever happening, I have to believe that it's something I can accomplish. If not, what else is there for me to hope for?"

"Well said!" Shadow said approvingly.

"Don't worry, Knux, we'll find a way to do whatever we need to do to bring the rest of your kind back," Sonic promised.

"Well, so long as they don't turn out to be intent on conquering the world or anything," Tails added.

"Well, yeah, that goes without saying," Sonic agreed.

"Then why did he say it?" Cream said innocently.

Sonic looked flustered. "It's… You know, that's actually a good question…"

"And if all else fails, well… I suppose I wouldn't mind helping to sire a whole new species…" Rouge said with a lascivious grin, leaning awfully close to Knuckles and sensually tracing the crescent on his chest with her finger. The echidna gulped. Shadow scowled and clenched his fists.

"It looks as if you've made up your mind as to what to do next," Tikal said approvingly. "Very good. This is why I took so long before telling you, Knuckles… Because I knew that when it was time for you to learn the truth, you would do better with friends by your side."

"And you were right to," Knuckles admitted. "Thank you, Tikal."

"Is there anything more you can tell us? Anything at all?" Silver asked.

Tikal shook her head. "I'm afraid not. Which means, I believe, it's time for me to take my leave."

"Aw, don't go! You just got here!" Sonic protested.

"Yeah, and we'd love to catch up with you!" Amy agreed.

"Sorry, I'd love to stay, but I have to get chili dogs I promised back to Chaos," Tikal said apologetically. "If you think he was angry when he wiped out the echidnas, or destroyed Station Square, trust me, you've never seen him when he's hungry."

"As transcendental cosmic beings, I would've thought you wouldn't even feel hunger," Tails said.

Tikal rolled her eyes. "That's what I keep telling HIM, but does he listen? Nooooo." She waved her hand, and several chili dogs levitated off the table nearby, sparkling with pink light. "It was lovely seeing all of you again, as well as meeting many of you for––what I suppose seems like to you to be––the first time. Farewell, all. I look forward to seeing you all again soon."

"Goodbye, Ms. Tikal!" Cream said with a wave.

"Awww, oh well. We'll see you again soon!" Amy said optimistically.

"It was a pleasure meeting you. You are far more amiable than many beings like you I have encountered," Blaze said.

"Yeah, great meeting you…but when you say 'soon,' do you mean soon for us or soon for you, since you said you don't perceive time the same way as the rest of us?" Rouge asked.

"And will it be a casual affair, or a matter of global importance?" Shadow asked.

Tikal smiled cryptically. "That's for you to find out for yourselves. Oh, and before I forget… Omega, if I were you, I would move 5 feet to your left. Just a thought."

"WHY-SHOULD-i? YOU-AREN'T-THE-BOSS-OF-ME," Omega said petulantly.

"Omega, she's an ancient nigh-omniscient mystical being that's seen and done things beyond our comprehension. Just humor her," Shadow said. Omega grumbled but reluctantly conceded.

"Thank you. You'll thank me for this later," Tikal said. She began to rise into the air. "Goodbye, everyone! Until next time!" As everyone shouted their farewells, she transformed into a small ball of pink light and flew off into the blue sky, the effect somewhat lessened by the numerous chili dogs floating after her.

"Well, it was nice seeing her again," Amy spoke up.

"It's been too long," Sonic agreed.

"Yeah, she was really pretty," Charmy agreed.

"Certainly better than most echidnas," Espio agreed.

"I'd say that was racist if it weren't quite possibly true," Rouge admitted.

"And for better or worse, I finally know my history," Knuckles said.

"As do the rest of us, by proxy," Tails said.

"I bet the Professor would have loved to know that history or interview someone who was really around for all that…ah well," Shadow said with a shrug.

"So, who's next?" Cream asked cheerfully.

"Well, I think we should start with-" Silver began.

"WARNING!" Omega interrupted. "I-AM-PICKING-UP-A-DIMENSIONAL-FLUX-RIGHT-WHERE-I-WAS-STANDING-A-MINUTE-AGO!"

"Huh. Guess it was a good thing you listened to Tikal's warning after all," Rouge said.

"Get ready, everyone, there's no telling what's about to show up!" Shadow said, everyone tensing as the air 5 feet to Omega's right started crackling, sparking…

And in a flash of light, something materialized, scorching the ground around it. Steam rising from its form due to the sudden entry into their reality, the new arrival rose from its crouch, revealing itself to be wearing a form-fitting, all-body grey and black combat uniform with additional armor plating on the upper chest and back, a pair of black and light-grey armored boots with an iridescent pink strip running down the thigh and toe, a black and white armor-plated helmet covering with two branching, backwards and down curling "horns", a luminous pink sigil on the forehead, and purple-white eye visors adorned with outward-sweeping pieces of light-grey material and a pair of pink circles on the muzzle area. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Rouge, Shadow, Omega, Amy, Cream all gasped in surprised recognition.

The others, not so much. "ALIEN INVADER! KILL IT!" Charmy shrieked.

"With pleasure!" Blaze said, readying a fireball.

"No, wait! She's not…well, okay, yeah, technically she is, but…not anymore…" Sonic trailed off vaguely.

Tails nodded in agreement. "Yes, that's not an enemy, that's-"

"Shade!" Amy cried.

Espio blinked. "Shade?"

"Shade!" Knuckles echoed.

"Shade?" asked a perplexed Silver.

"Shade!" Cream squealed in delight.

"Shade!" Vector yelled, not wanting to be left out.

"Shade?" said the confused Charmy.

"SHADE," Omega intoned.

Big continued to fish, oblivious to everything around him.

"Why are we all yelling 'Shade?'" asked a confused Mighty.

"Because that's her name," Rouge said.

"Oh," Mighty said. He blinked. "Wait, that's a girl?!"

"I thought it was obvious," Blaze said. The armadillo flushed in embarrassment.

The entity's helmet retracted to reveal the face of a lovely female echidna with orange fur, seven dreadlocks shorter than Knuckles', and a black headband bearing the same sigil as her helmet. Eyes watering in tears of joy—as well as the glare from the sun, which she did not seem used to-she looked up into the bright blue sky. "I made it…" she whispered. "At last, I'm finally back…"

…

Bet you didn't expect this surprise guest, now did you? That's right, next chapter is featuring Shade of the Nocturnus! And it'll definitely be much shorter!...I think.

Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Now, pick who you want to go after Shade! **Rouge, Cream, Big, the Babylon Rogues, Blaze** , or **Sticks?** Also, would anyone be interested in an origin for Fang the Sniper or Eggman?

And as always, if you have ideas for other characters' origins, please let me know.


	6. Shade's Saga

Welcome back! I hope you liked the last chapter, because this one features even MORE echidnas! Well, just the one, but still! It's also longer. Again. Sorry! This is just something that seems to happen when I write, I guess. Anyway, enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.

…

Cream gasped and ran towards the armored echidna, hugging her, an excited Cheese squeaking and circling the new arrival. "Shade! I missed you so much!"

The echidna laughed and hugged her back. "I missed you as well, Cream, and everyone else too! To be honest, I wasn't certain if I would ever see you again, what with the time difference between our dimensions and all! Why, you barely look any different from the last time I saw you!" She frowned. "How long has it been since last we saw each other, for you?"

"It's been a couple of years, more or less," Tails said. "How long has it been for you?"

The other echidna shrugged. "I can't be sure, honestly. Time flows differently in my world, after all. It's almost impossible to tell if any time has passed at all, some days...though that might not be the right word for it, either. It certainly FEELS like it's been a long time, but…" She shrugged. "In any event, it is good to see all of you!" She blinked. "Emphasis on 'all.' While I certainly expected I would see a few of you as soon as I appeared, I did not anticipate running into ALL of you, as well as these others whom I am not familiar with…"

"Well, we certainly didn't expect to run into you, either," Vector quipped.

"And to think, you're actually the SECOND transdimensional female echidna to show up today!" Charmy joked.

"We certainly live interesting lives, don't we?" Espio said.

Shade blinked. "The… Second?"

"Long story," Sonic said, stepping forward to embrace the confused echidna. "Let's just say you aren't the first friend we haven't seen in a long time to show up today and leave it at that."

"And CERTAINLY not the first echidna," Shadow said.

"At this rate, Knuckles, your claim of being the last echidna is starting to look a bit false," Rouge joked.

"Tikal's a spirit, and Shade's from another dimension! Doesn't count," Knuckles insisted. "Anyway, yeah, welcome back, Shade! It's good to see you again!"

Shade smiled as she made her way over to the other echidna. "And I, you, Knuckles. Out of all my friends here, I think it is you I missed the most." She leaned over, lips puckering up…

And Rouge coughed. Loudly. Shade blinked. "Oh…wait, you two are still…"

"Um. Yeah," Knuckles said, blushing deeply.

"Oh. I, uh, I would have thought…right. Um. Sorry," Shade said, looking deeply embarrassed.

"It's, um, it's fine," Knuckles said quickly.

"No it isn't," Rouge growled. "What exactly is it that you 'would have thought?'"

Shade winced and glanced away. "I'd, ah, rather not say." Rouge narrowed her eyes.

An awkward silence descended. The two echidnas fidgeted and would not look at each other. "Beloved, could you introduce us to your friend here, please?" Blaze asked pointedly, to break the silence.

Sonic blinked. "Huh? Oh, yeah! Guys, this is Shade, that other echidna we mentioned before. You know, the one from a tribe who was banished to another dimension?"

Silver nodded. "Right, that Nocturnus female. She turned against her leader and helped you guys save the world from him, then helped you liberate the planet from Eggman—who took over while you were in her dimension-before returning to help her people rebuild in her own world?"

"That sums it up rather succinctly," Shade said. "And you are…?"

"Silver the Hedgehog," Silver explained. "I'm from the FYOO-CHURR!"

Shade's eyes widened in amazement. "From the future? I had not thought time travel to be possible! It has certainly eluded our scientists for millennia!"

"Time travel is VERY possible," Silver assured her. "And surprisingly easy, too. You see, what you have to do is…ah, perhaps I shouldn't say. After all, it hasn't been invented in this time…yet."

"If you're from the future, then can you tell me-" Shade started, but Amy cut her off.

"Don't bother, he refuses to tell us anything about what the future is like," the pink hedgehog complained.

"And to make things worse, he keeps nearly slipping up and telling us stuff, only to catch himself at the last minute, which is not only super annoying, but only makes us even more curious about what his time is like and what our futures will be," Charmy griped.

"Yes, I can see how that would be annoying," Shade said, causing Silver to frown.

"We're the Chaotix!" Vector declared, gesturing to his teammates. "I don't believe we've crossed paths before, but we ran into a few of your Marauder colleagues back when you were trying to invade our world."

"Oh yes, I believe you were mentioned in a few of our scouts' reports," Shade recalled.

"Yeah?" Vector asked, perking up at this.

"Yes, they said that if all of Earth's defenders were as incompetent as you, succeeding in our plans would be child's play," Shade said, causing the three detectives to sweatdrop.

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Charmy snarked.

"I'm Mighty," the armadillo said, offering a hand. "I'm an old pal of Sonic's. I used to be a member of the Chaotix, but now I'm going to make my own way because they're horrible people and I hate them more than anyone else in the world." The detectives cringed.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Mighty," Shade said, shaking the armadillo's hand.

"And I am Blaze, ruler of the greatest kingdom of the Sol dimension and Sonic's paramour," Blaze said.

"So you are from another dimension as well? Which means you must have your own way of traveling between worlds… Fascinating… It is an honor to meet you, your Majesty," Shade said with a graceful bow. "But… Sonic, I thought you and Amy…?"

"Never gonna happen," Sonic said flatly.

"Yes, it will!" Amy insisted.

"No, it really won't," Sonic disagreed.

"Well, at least there's always Dexter," Shade suggested.

"Doesn't exist," Sonic said. "Amy made him up in an attempt to make me jealous. It didn't work."

"Oh," Shade said. "Um...sorry, Amy."

"Don't be! Sonic will be mine one day, I just know it!" Amy said.

"No she won't," Sonic said. Everyone else nodded in agreement. Amy scowled.

"Shade, while it's wonderful to see you again, how did you get back here?" Tails asked. "The last time we saw you, you said you weren't sure if you'd ever be able to get back here due to our dimensions shifting out of alignment."

Shade smirked. "The good thing about dimensions shifting out of alignment is that it means that, eventually, they'll one day shift BACK into alignment, as they have now. We've been tinkering with our warp belt technology ever since I returned to the Twilight Cage to see if we can truly breach the barrier between realms, instead of simply visiting for a short period of time. Once all the conditions were ideal, I volunteered to test the first of the new model belts, since I figured that, if any of you were still around, you'd probably react better to my appearance then another sudden incursion of strange foreign entities."

"That's pretty sensible," Mighty agreed.

"But how did you know to appear here, right in front of us?" Knuckles asked. "That's a pretty big coincidence, don't you think?"

"Given the sorts of things that happen to us all the time? Not really," Shadow said.

"Actually, I had no idea you were even going to be here. My belt was able to transport me here by locking onto the energy signature of a Chaos Emerald, and I figured there was a good chance of me running into one or more of you when I appeared, because Chaos Emeralds seem to have a way of turning up wherever you go, or the other way around," Shade explained.

"She must've locked onto your Emerald, Shadow," Rouge said.

Shadow pulled out a glittering gemstone. "Hmm, that might explain why I felt an energy spike just before she showed up."

"Why didn't you mention that?" Amy asked.

Shadow shrugged. "Omega picked it up first."

"MY-SENSORS-ARE-SUPERIOR-TO-YOURS," the robot bragged.

"So, are you fully 'here,' or are you still carrying a bubble of the Twilight Cage around you?" Tails asked.

Shade shook her head. "No, I'm fully here, in your dimension, thanks to the improvements we've made to the warp belt. Using a Chaos Emerald as an anchor from your end helped immensely, we can hijack its power to pull off a trans-dimensional Chaos Control instead of the temporary 'warp jump' the previous models used. And since this test run was a complete success, that means once I return, we can begin work on bringing everyone else in the Cage back over… And this time, I promise that we won't try to take over the world. I'll make certain of it."

"So you've succeeded in taking over the Nocturnus and putting them on a more peaceful path, then?" Rouge asked. Knuckles perked up at this notion. Tikal had hinted as much, and if Shade had succeeded, that meant there might be hope for his people turning away from their evil nature in the future.

Shade nodded. "With Ix gone, and Scylla and Charyb dismantled, I was the highest ranking member of the clan left, and the only one the other denizens of the Cage respected, thanks to my adventures with you all. It was a simple matter to take over leadership of the Nocturnus with the help of Nestor the Wise." She sighed and rubbed her forehead. "It's been a less simple matter actually RUNNING it, and keeping everyone else from going at each other's throats, however. The major reason they all agreed to peace with each other in the first place was to unite against Ix, and with him gone, most of their old grudges and rivalries have resurfaced. Still, I'd like to think I've done a fairly good job of keeping order in the Cage, and hopefully once we release everyone else, they will continue to act on the lessons they've learned, and won't go around destroying planets again, or anything like that."

"So you're going to let out everyone else? The Kron, the Voxai, the N'rrgal, the Zoah…?" Shadow asked.

"The who?" Vector asked.

"The other aliens who were imprisoned in the Cage by Argus," Tails explained.

"She has to let them out!" Cream insisted. "They may have been bad in the past, but they aren't like that anymore! We can't just leave them there! They don't deserve that, nobody does!"

Shade nodded. "Indeed. In fact, we wouldn't have even been able to perfect the new warp belt technology without everyone's help." She smiled ruefully. "Of course, they refused to help us until we guaranteed them that they could come with us, so we didn't have much choice…"

"So pretty soon we're going to have not just one, but five new species appearing in our world? Yeah, that's going to go over well with the world governments…" Mighty murmured.

"Isn't it four? I mean, I'm already here," Knuckles pointed out.

"Yes, but you're a singular echidna. The Nocturnus are an entire nation," Rouge pointed out. "And Mighty is correct, the sudden arrival of five new civilizations, all of whom are incredibly powerful and dangerous, is going to frighten a lot of people. Shade, if you're going to do this, you're going to have to do it delicately. If all of you just show up at once without warning, it could mean a war."

"I understand that," Shade said. "Which is another reason I came first, so that I could meet with your leaders, and hopefully negotiate terms for our return and a place for us all to settle down. The world is a big place, surely there is room for all of us somewhere."

"…That…could be a problem," Sonic said uncomfortably. "While I'm sure there's room somewhere, most places are owned by one country or another, and…we've been invaded by aliens before, and they nearly wrecked the planet, and lots of people still remember that, so…yeah, not gonna lie, it might be hard to convince everyone to let not just a bunch of foreign echidnas who used to be evil, but FOUR alien races, move in."

Shade's face fell. "Oh…I was afraid of that. I'm fairly certain most of them will behave, but the Zoah…yes, I can understand why your leaders might be wary of them…"

"And the Voxai are psychic. Can't forget that. People can get rather paranoid at the thought of someone going around reading minds," Amy added.

"Totally not a problem in my time," Silver said.

"The aliens can't go back to their own worlds?" Blaze asked.

"I'm not certain their planets even _exist_ anymore," Shade said sadly. "Let alone any way for them to get there easily. If they, or we, cannot find a place on this world, I'm not sure where else we can go."

"You could always go to Angel Island," Espio said. "It's not like anyone but Knuckles is using it, and no government or country owns it."

"Hey! That's…actually not a bad idea," said the surprised Knuckles. "I mean, I'm not exactly okay with so many people moving in, but…if they've really got nowhere else to go…well, and it'd be nice to have more company, I suppose. Plus, it might help keep anyone from stealing the Master Emerald if it was known there are five powerful nations living there…plus, it wouldn't exactly be the first time an echidna civilization has been up there…"

"Didn't the last one destroy itself?" Shadow asked. "Specifically because of your father's actions?"

"Well…yeah, but we're not going to let that happen again, right?" Knuckles asked, looking uncertain.

"Again? Father? What are you talking about?" Asked the confused Shade.

"Oh, it turns out that Knuckles is only the last of the echidnas because his father, one of the most important echidnas in the civilization that used to rule Angel Island, enacted some insane scheme to use the Master Emerald to cause the entire species except for one man to ascend to godhood in an attempt to win his ex-wife back, wiping out just about everyone in the process," Sonic said.

"Which wasn't very nice," Cream said firmly.

Shade nodded in understanding. "Ah, yes, that DOES sound like something a high-ranking echidna would do, especially one from a descendent of the Knuckles clan. No offense, Knuckles, but from what I recall of your ancestors, doing something incredibly stupid and self-destructive out of petty selfishness or desire was one of their defining features."

"I probably would be insulted, if that weren't absolutely true," Knuckles grumbled. "Fortunately, I'm nothing like that. Much."

"I assure you, however, we have learned from our mistakes and would not do something so stupid as that again. NONE of us want to do something that would get us banished back to the Twilight Cage again, or worse," Shade assured the other echidna.

"That is a great relief," Knuckles said. And really, it was. In spite of everything Tikal had told him about how awful his species had been in the past, despite how much his faith in his own kind had been shaken by recent revelations, the prospect of being able to live among other echidnas still excited him. And if they really HAD become good now, and would not repeat the same mistakes that had doomed their people again and again and again… Well, that made the prospect of having other echidnas as his neighbors all the more exciting.

"Even if the Nocturnus agreed to leave the Master Emerald off-limits––and really, given what it did to the last civilization that tried to abuse its power, you'd have to be complete idiots not to––can we be absently certain the others won't make a play for it?" Shadow asked warily.

"Well, I'm fairly certain that the Kron, N'rrgal, and Voxai are sensible enough to leave well enough alone…the Zoah, however…" Tails said with a frown.

Amy nodded. "Yeah, I can't see those guys leaving the Master Emerald alone, just because it's so powerful and dangerous it could erase the entire species from existence."

"If anything, that would just make it all the MORE appealing to them!" Rouge agreed.

"I take it the Zoah are your typical militarily-inclined, dominating, proud warrior-race kind of species?" Blaze asked.

"Yep," Sonic said.

The feline sighed. "Oh dear. Those can always be such a bother…"

"Yes, the Zoah WOULD probably be tempted to try and take the Emerald, no matter how many treaties and ceasefires we have with them," Shade admitted. "While the other leaders seem okay with giving peace a chance, General Raxos is…less inclined. But, if he DOES make a move, he'll have to deal with the rest of us, just as we Nocturnus know that if we show any signs of reverting to our old ways the others will similarly gang up on us. A delicate, but—so far—effective system of checks and balances."

"There, you see? It could work!" Knuckles said hopefully.

"Even so, I'm not positive that the world leaders will be happy having five incredibly advanced and powerful species not only having sole access to one of the most powerful and dangerous artifacts in the world, but inhabiting a floating island that is constantly on the move and could, in theory, be transformed into a weapons platform to bombard the world below unopposed," Shadow pointed out.

"That's not going to happen!… Again," Knuckles insisted.

"Again?" Shade asked in confusion.

"Mr. Knuckles' ancestors apparently wiped out a number of species in the past," Cream said sadly. "Those poor dingoes…"

Shade gasped. "The dingoes are no more?! But we were trade partners with them for generations! Many of my people were hoping to check in on them and see if any of their favorite places were still around!"

"Um. Sorry?" Knuckles said sheepishly.

Shade sighed. "The world truly has changed…"

"Is there even room on Angel Island for five civilizations?" Espio asked. "I mean, yeah, it's pretty big, but is it THAT big?"

"I think so. It's not like the colonies were THAT big," Sonic said.

"And the Nocturne can fly, so if they run out of space, they could just anchor it to the side or something," Tails suggested.

"Assuming we even get that far," Rouge reminded them. "Like I said before, this is going have to be handled delicately, which isn't something most of us are exactly suited for."

"SHE-SPEAKS-TRUTH," Omega said.

"I may be able to grease the wheels a bit, though. I have a few…levers I can pull. Favors I'm owed. Blackmail I can exploit. Just leave it to me, and I'll see if I can't get you and your various peoples accepted by the world governments," Rouge promised. "And if that falls through, and Angel Island doesn't work out… I may know of ONE place left for you to go, although… Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

"Rouge, are you certain-" Shadow asked sharply.

"If they have nowhere else to go, Shadow, can you think of any place better?" The bat asked. He frowned, but did not argue.

"What are you talking about?" Asked the confused Mighty.

"I'll explain when it's my turn," Rouge promised.

"Rouge, if you could secure a home for us, we would be forever in your debt," Shade said gratefully.

Rouge smiled, and there was something oddly sinister with the way she bared her fangs. "Thank you. I'll remember you said that. I may hold you to it… _especially_ the 'forever' part."

Vector blinked. "Okay, am I the only one who just felt shivers go down his spine?"

"No, I felt it too," Espio said.

"And if even THAT fails… Hey, Blaze, do you think you could find a place for them in your world?" Sonic asked.

"I might," the Royal cat said, considering. "However, they would have to swear fealty to me, and agree to be vassal states for my ever-expanding empire."

"That will never happen," Shade said firmly. "We just got through being ruled by one dictator. We will not trade our sovereignty away for another."

Blaze shrugged. "Very well. However, know that if you change your mind… The offer is still on the table. I'm certain I could find SOME use for technology or power the levels of which I've heard you and your allies possess."

"Blaze, when you say things like that I have a hard time convincing myself you aren't evil," Sonic complained.

"Apologies, beloved. But remember, I'm a ruler in a rather harsh and dangerous world. I cannot afford to do something simply because it's nice," Blaze reminded her paramour.

"Given the hints you've dropped so far, I've gotta ask…what, do you come from Westeros or something?" Mighty asked.

"Thankfully, no…but there are places in my world not far off from that, so yes, I must constantly be on vigil to maintain my power and ensure the safety and well-being of my subjects. And if that means conquering the world to make sure nothing will ever threaten them again, then that is what I shall do," Blaze said with a shrug.

Mighty raised an eyebrow, and then glanced at Sonic. "You're SURE she's not evil?"

"Yes," Sonic said. "And even if she is, I'd pick her over some of the other guys in her world, trust me on this. It's not a bad place for the most part… Especially not in the parts she's taken over. That wasn't always the case."

"Now _I'm_ starting to get interested in your origin," Charmy commented.

"Origin?" Asked the confused Shade.

"Oh, right, you just got here, so you wouldn't know," Sonic said. "You're probably wondering why all of us were gathered here in the first place."

"The thought had occurred to me, yes," Shade admitted.

"Well, we were just having a party to celebrate defeating Eggman's latest plot to take over the world, when Silver here," Tails said, nodding at the time traveler. "Appeared to tell us that his enemy, Eggman Nega, was traveling back into our pasts to change history so that we wouldn't be the heroes-"

"Or antiheroes," Shadow corrected.

"Or antiheroes," Tails agreed. "That we are now, so he asked us to tell him about the pivotal moments in our lives that set us on the path to becoming who we are now, so that he could go back in time and undo whatever changes Nega makes to our timelines and ensure our personal histories remain intact."

"So, we've been swapping origin stories since then," Sonic explained. "I told everyone about how I got my super speed in a lab accident."

"Which, coincidentally, was the same experiment that created me in the first place," Tails added.

"Oh, so that's why you have two tails," Shade realized. "I always wondered but wasn't sure if it would be polite to ask."

"I told everyone the romantic true story of how I first fell in love with Sonic!" Amy gushed.

"And then got cursed by a fortune teller," Cream added.

"I WAS NOT!" Amy shouted.

"Yes, she was," Rouge whispered to Shade. Rather loudly. So Amy could hear it. The hedgehog fumed.

"We told the story of how we tried to be superheroes, failed, and became detectives instead!" Vector said.

"And I told the story of how my so-called friends abandoned and ignored me for years so I want nothing to do with them ever again," Mighty snarled. The Chaotix winced.

"Tikal told the story of my ancestors, and of how my father wiped out my entire species in an act of petty jealousy," Knuckles said.

"Tikal? The daughter of Pachacamac?" Shade asked in surprise. "But she should have died, thousands of years ago!"

"She did die. Sort of. She's a ghost, more or less," Charmy said.

"Actually, she's not a ghost so much as an individual who has transcended mortality and is no longer bound by the shackles of time or physical existence," Rouge corrected the bee.

Charmy rolled his eyes. "Yeah, whatever."

"Oh, I see," Shade said, not looking like she saw at all.

"And we were about to get to the next origin story when you showed up," Silver said. "So now that we've got all that out of the way, perhaps we can-"

"Hey, I've got an idea!" Amy interjected. "Shade, why don't you tell us YOUR origin story?"

"Wait, what?" Asked the startled Silver.

"Yeah, that's a great idea!" Sonic agreed.

"Now, hold on a minute-" Silver protested.

"Please tell us your origin, Miss Shade? Please, please, please?" Cream begged.

"Wait, just a second-" Silver spluttered.

"It would be interesting to learn a bit more about an ancient echidna civilization," Shadow agreed. "We know a bit about the Knuckles clan, and what they became, but we know surprisingly little about the Nocturnus, given that we traveled with one for a while and spent a good chunk of time fighting them."

"Wait! WAIT!" Silver cried.

"Well, I suppose there are a few tales I could relate-" Shade said thoughtfully.

"STOP!" Silver shouted, getting everyone's attention.

"WHAT-IS-THE-PROBLEM?" Omega asked in annoyance.

"Guys, it's YOUR origin stories I need to hear, not hers! Eggman Nega isn't going after HER past! She doesn't need to tell us anything!" Silver insisted.

"No, but we'd LIKE to hear about her past, so shouldn't that count for something?" Rouge asked.

"But… But-" Silver protested.

"Look, it's not like you're in a hurry or anything, right?" Sonic asked. "You're a time traveler, so you can take as long as you need before going after Nega, right?"

"And how would you know? You may have gone on a few adventures through time, but that doesn't mean you know anything about how time travel works!" Silver said indignantly.

"No, but I HAVE noticed that nothing seems to have changed so far, and we've already been at this for quite a while," Blaze pointed out.

"So with that in mind, I don't really see how spending a little more time listening to someone else's story could have a major effect on anything," Tails agreed.

"But… I… That…" Silver spluttered for a few moments before sagging his shoulders, giving in. "Oh, very well!" He snapped. "But she'd better make it fast!"

"Don't listen to him, Shade! You can take as long as you need," Amy assured the other echidna.

"Thank you, Amy," Shade said, thankfully. "Now, where do we start? Well, I'm assuming you already know of the great war between the Knuckles and Nocturnus clan's for dominance over the world, yes?"

"It's come up a few times, yes," Espio said deadpan.

"I was born in the final years of that conflict. There was nothing particularly remarkable about my early childhood," Shade said. "My family was roughly middle-class. My father was a soldier, and my mother an artist. I had a couple of sisters who hated me."

"Why would they do that?" Asked the perplexed Cream.

Shade shrugged. "Either because they believed I stole all our parents' affections, or because they were completely insane. I'm not certain which. We weren't particularly wealthy, but we were able to afford a couple of slaves, so were considered rather fashionable in our neighborhood."

"Wait, slaves?" Sonic asked.

"Er, yes. We were an imperialistic society bent on conquest. We, ah, had a lot of slaves," Shade said, looking abashed.

"I rule an imperialistic society bent on conquest and don't have any slaves," Blaze commented.

"What about-" Tails started.

"Those don't count," the cat said sharply. The fox shrugged and dropped the subject.

"Oh, right! I forgot for a minute that all ancient echidnas were evil jerks," Vector said. "Of _course_ they had slaves!" Knuckles groaned.

"We don't have slaves anymore," Shade said defensively.

"Were you least nice to them?" Cream begged.

Shade licked her lips. "Define 'nice.'"

Everyone groaned. "Evil. Jerks," Vector repeated. Knuckles sighed.

"It was a different time, okay?!" Shade insisted. "Anyway, when I was about Cream's age, I was enrolled in the military."

"But you must have been so young!" Amy said, startled.

"Enrollment in our nation's military was compulsory at an early age," Shade explained. "After spending several years in basic training, you can either opt to return to civilian life––with the knowledge that, if need be, you can be conscripted in wartime––or go on to become a career soldier. With my father in the military, and, naturally, that was the path I eventually chose."

"But that's horrible!" Said the shocked Cream.

"Actually, throughout history there have been plenty of countries who force their citizens to undergo at least some degree of military training. There are even a few that still do that today," Shadow said.

"That doesn't make it any less horrible!" The rabbit said.

Shadow shrugged. "You have to get soldiers from somewhere. Well, unless you make them, anyway."

"LIKE-ME," Omega said.

"Training was… Hard. VERY hard," Shade said, a shadow briefly passing across her face. "The war with the Knuckles clan had gone on for far longer than anyone had expected. Soldiers were dying in droves, and our nigh-invincible Gizoid army had yet to be constructed so they were pushing us as hard and as fast as they could in a desperate attempt to get more warm bodies to throw into the grist to buy time for the higher-ups to find a way to decisively end the conflict."

"How awful…" Cream whispered.

"War rarely is," Blaze said bluntly.

Shade nodded in agreement. "Quite a few trainees broke, unable to deal with what they were putting us through. I almost did as well… But thanks to Babe, I was able to retain my sanity."

"'Babe?'" asked the confused Sonic.

"I didn't know you were into girls, Shade!" said the surprised Amy.

"Wait, but she tried to kiss Knuckles…" said the puzzled Espio.

"Could be bi," Charmy said.

Shade blinked in confusion. "What? No, no, Babe was my pet pig."

"Ohhhhhhhhh," everyone said. There was a pause. "Wait, you had a pet PIG?!" Asked the incredulous Rouge.

"They were all the rage back then!" Shade said defensively. "It was a different time, okay?"

"I'm surprised they let you keep a pet at all, given you were in boot camp," Mighty said.

"When the new, harsher training measures were first implemented, our superiors quickly realized that they might not have been the best idea when the trainees started losing their minds and violently killing each other, their instructors, or themselves. But, instead of dialing things back a bit––we were in a war, after all, and they didn't think they could afford to slack off at all––they got the brilliant idea to give recruits a bright spot in their lives," Shade explained. "Each cadet was allowed to keep one precious individual with them on base. A friend. A loved one. Or, as in my case, a beloved pet. Someone to come home to at the end of the day, a companion to keep us sane and help us remember that there were things worth fighting for."

"Awww, that's sweet!" Amy gushed.

"A trusted and beloved companion, just like you, Cheese!" Cream cooed, patting her pet, who chirped happily.

"Huh, I wouldnt've expected something that halfway decent from one of those old-time echidnas," Charmy commented.

"I would probably be insulted if you weren't probably right," Knuckles said warily. "Where's the catch, Shade?"

Shade's expression darkened. "The catch is when our superiors thought of a way to turn even THAT bright spot into a way to hone us into better killing machines…"

The air began to waver…

"What's that?!" She cried in alarm.

"What? Oh, sorry, that's just a side effect of my machine here," Silver explained, holding up his recorder. "It has the power to project images based on your memories when you tell a story so that we're able to see and hear what you experienced back then."

Shade sighed in relief. "Thank goodness, I thought something had gone wrong with my warp belt and I was being drawn back into the Cage. Still, that is a fascinating device. Something from your time?"

"It is," Silver said. "It's nothing to be afraid of, I promise. You can tell your story."

Should hesitated for moment. "I'm… Not entirely certain I WANT you to see what happened next…"

"Come on, Shade! Tell us!" Sonic urged her.

"Yeah, how bad could it be?" Amy asked.

Shadow raised an eyebrow. "Did you really just ask that?"

Shade sighed. "Very well. It happened like this…"

The air started to waver again, and while she cringed, she continued her tale.

…

A much younger Shade the Echidna stood at attention in the middle of a long line of other echidnas, all young recruits like herself, all wearing the black armor with glowing cyan outlines that was characteristic of the Nocturnus military. This was nothing out of the ordinary, she often found herself standing in formation with the others several times a day, sometimes for hours on end; as was the norm for military training.

What was NOT ordinary, however, was how she had been ordered to bring Babe with her, just as all the other recruits had been commanded to bring their precious others out with them. Nothing like this had ever been done before in their memory. Their loved ones were usually confined to quarters or told to keep out of the way so as not to interfere with training. Shade glanced at the echidna next to her, Gae-Na, raising an eyebrow to silently inquire if she had any idea what was going on. The other recruit shrugged, equally puzzled, her hand tightly wrapped around that of her little brother, Cobar, who was sucking on a candy, oblivious to the world around him.

By her feet, Babe oinked softly and nuzzled her ankle, and Shade smiled briefly, giving him a fond look. The last few years of her life had been an absolute hell, and there had been days where, if she hadn't had that soft, warm snout and bright, happy eyes to come home to every night, she'd have killed herself long ago. Her family and other friends had almost faded from her memory. The only thing left to her that truly mattered in this world was the pig next to her. She loved him more than anything else, and could not fathom a world where he did not exist.

…

"That's adorable!" Amy cooed.

"Aww, he sounds just like Cream is to me!" Cream squealed, hugging her Chao tightly.

A somewhat more cynical and savvy Blaze commented, "There is absolutely no way this can possibly end well."

…

"Atten-SHUN!"

Everyone in the courtyard instinctively stiffened in place, staring straight ahead of them, as years of training had drilled into them. Princeps Syntar stalked into view, with several Velite and Hastatus soldiers flanking him. "Cadets," the grizzled veteran who'd been all but torturing them every day for the last several years barked. "You should all be proud of yourselves! When first you entered this base, you were mewling, sniveling worms, crying for your mothers! Now, you are hardened, well-trained killing machines, ready to fight and die for the glory of our clan!"

"FOR GLORY! FOR IX! FOR NOCTURNUS!" Everyone instinctively shouted, saluting, as years of training had drilled into them.

"Not all of you could make it this far," Syntar continued. "There are far fewer of you here than there were when we first started out. The weak and the worthless have been culled and broken, leaving only the strong, the mighty, the truly worthy left to bear the mantle of service to our great civilization! When you graduate tomorrow and leave to fight and conquer for our country, you will not be echidnas, but WARRIORS! I salute you, each and every one of you!"

"SIR, THANK YOU SIR!" Everyone shouted.

Syntar grinned for a moment, and there was something cruel and unspeakably horrifying in the way he smiled. "However, before you can graduate, there is one last little task you must accomplish. One final training exercise for you to pass." He nodded at them. "For reasons I can't possibly fathom, the higher-ups allowed each of you to have a companion to keep you company and give you a shoulder to cry on when training got too hard for you pathetic mommy-loving sissies and allowed each of you to feel like you weren't just a soldier, but still a person underneath all that. That ends now. Before you can graduate, you must do one last simple thing…" His grin turned downright sadistic. "You must kill that companion, that one speck of light in your lives, the one thing that's kept you from becoming true, hardhearted soldiers, in cold blood. You may kill them any way you wish. Cut their throats, stab them in the heart, disembowel them, strangle them, snap their necks… I don't care how you do it, just kill them. And no, this is absolutely not a bluff, or some warped test to see just how loyal you are with us calling you off at the last minute to prove that you'd be willing to sacrifice even those most precious to you if ordered to without actually _having_ to. You are to kill them, and kill them now, and that's an order, and if even one of you refuses, then my friends here will kill you all. Yes, I admit it's a bit of a waste for us to have spent the last few years training you just to kill you, but really, it'll be your fault for squandering all the time and effort we put into making you the echidnas you are." He clasped his hands behind his back. "So, shall we begin?"

…

Everyone stared at Shade in horror. "Seriously?" Asked an incredulous Vector. "SERIOUSLY?!"

"Knuckles, your species is even more evil than I ever imagined," Shadow said flatly to the aghast Knuckles.

"Goddammit! What the hell is WRONG with my people?!" Knuckles shouted.

Shade sighed. "I would say that there was a war on, but we both know that is no excuse. If it's any consolation, that practice fell out of favor eventually due to so many of the soldiers forced to go through with it being so broken that they killed themselves before ever reaching the front lines."

"No, that isn't even remotely a consolation," Mighty said bluntly.

"Why… Why would they tell you to do something like that? That's so horrible!" Said the shocked Amy.

"But… But there's no way anyone could ever possibly be that evil… Right?" A worried Cream asked, hugging the frightened Cheese to her chest so hard he was starting to have trouble breathing.

"Something like that has actually been attempted by several militaries throughout history," Rouge said in disgust. "They seem to think that forcing a soldier to kill the person they love most will make them a more effective warrior. It… Rarely actually works that way, but that doesn't stop them from trying it over and over again, anyway."

"But… Why? Why would they do something so pointlessly cruel?!" Amy demanded.

"Because the people in charge of those armies don't actually care about their soldiers as individuals, just as numbers or warm bodies to throw at their enemies, and so long as they kill as many of their foes as they can before dying themselves, they don't give a shit about their mental health or well-being," Blaze said coldly. "I have fought far too many armies in my world who subscribe to such strategies… Which is actually part of the reason I myself am such a successful conqueror, because not only do I NOT treat my soldiers that way, but the people of the nations I take over are almost ecstatic to have me as their new leader because I DON'T do that to them, and in some cases have overthrown their previous rulers by the time I invade and welcome me into the capital with open arms."

"There are a lot of sick people in the world," Espio said grimly.

"But… But you didn't go through with it, did you?" Cream asked desperately. "You wouldn't do that, you're… You're a good person… You wouldn't hurt someone like that… Right?"

"…" Shade averted her gaze, not wanting to look at Cream's pleading expression. "I wasn't always the person you know now, Cream… And sometimes, there's no choice you can make that isn't awful in one way or another…"

…

Shade stared at Syntar in shock, which slowly turned into outrage. For the last several years, the Princeps had made every waking moment of her life a hell, and now he wanted to force her to kill the one thing that had made boot camp bearable?! No! She wouldn't stand for it, and neither would her peers! Sure, if they rebelled, some of them would die––their opponents were older and more experienced than them––but there were more of them than they, so they could eventually overwhelm them with sheer numbers! Blood boiling, she waited for one of the others to echo her feelings, to vocalize what she was sure there were all feeling, to declare that no, they would not do this, this was a step too far!

Syntar casually spoke. "Cadet Xenin?"

There was a pause, and then, from the far end of the line, there was a strangled scream.

Shade's heart skipped a beat. No…Xenin LOVED Floren-Ca, surely he wouldn't-

"Cadet Misty-Re?"

Another scream. Shade was frozen in disbelief and horror, too stunned to turn to look—or break formation—but out of the corner of her eye, she could see a crumpled body lying next to Misty-Re further down the line, the pretty female staring straight ahead with a dead look on her face, blood dripping from her Leech Blade.

And it was then, as Syntar called out names, each punctuated with a scream or grunt or gasp followed by silence, Shade realized that this was really happening. Her fellow cadets were murdering the people or creatures they loved most in the world. How could they do this? After everything they'd been through, how could they possibly do this?! Why wasn't anyone stepping forward?! Why wasn't anyone protesting?! Why wasn't anyone running away?! Why were they all just standing there, even the victims?! Why wasn't anyone DOING anything?!

And why wasn't she?

She knew the answer, of course. They were scared, every single one of them. Nobody wanted to make the first move. Nobody wanted to be singled out. Everyone was just desperately waiting and praying for someone else to take the initiative, so that they could feel justified in following their example. Well, that, and they were so conditioned to follow authority from all of the harsh training they'd undergone over the last few years, it might not actually be possible for any of them to disobey a direct order, even if they wanted to. Ironic, that training meant to make them soldiers who had no qualms with sacrificing themselves to kill their enemies also made them too terrified to step out of line.

But if even one person refused… Even one… She was sure that the others would follow. They would know not to be afraid. They would know they didn't have to do this. Yes, it might get them all killed, but they were PEOPLE dammit, not machines that couldn't think or feel for themselves!

Nobody refused. Nobody protested. Syntar continued calling names, and the cadets continued killing.

It was all up to her, Shade realized. If nobody else was willing to do something, then she would just have to do it herself. No matter what the consequences, she could not kill Babe. She could not harm her closest friend, even if he was just a lowly, unintelligent pig. His heart more than made up for that. She licked her lips, steeled herself, opened her mouth, hesitated, and steeled herself again, prepared to speak-

And suddenly Syntar was before her. "Cadet Shade?" He asked.

Shade's words died on her lips. Her voice escaped her. Her thoughts scattered. All she could see, all she could hear, all she could think about was the echidna filling her view, just as he had filled her life every day since she had first come to this terrible place.

Syntar frowned. "Cadet Shade?"

One word. Just one word! Two letters, one syllable! So simple! One of the easiest words in the world to say! Say it! SAY IT!

"Cadet Shade?" Syntar repeated, a dark look on his face.

Suddenly, Shade found that she had drawn her Leech Blades and was looming over Babe. How had that happened? When had she done that? What was she doing? Babe blinked and looked up at her innocently, a blissfully naïve expression on his face, his black beady eyes filled with nothing but blind, naked trust and love. She trembled. Her vision swam. Her heart palpitated. Her breath turned shallow.

"Cadet Shade, kill the damn pig already!" Syntar snapped. "Stop wasting my time and-"

He never finished the sentence, on account of the glowing energy blade buried in his sternum. It took a long moment for Shade to realize the blade was attached to her arm. She was just as surprised by this as Syntar was, from the look of disbelief on his face. His mouth opened and closed a few times like a fish. Blood dribbled down his chin, his eyes rolled back in his skull, and he fell backwards, hitting the ground with a dull thud, blood welling up from the wound in his chest.

…

Everyone stared Shade in astonishment. "… Holy crap," Sonic said.

"I'm… Honestly not certain whether I should be impressed that you did that or appalled that it went on that long," Tails said.

"You just…killed the guy?! Dang!" said an amazed Charmy.

"HE-HAD-IT-COMING," said an unsympathetic Omega.

"I don't understand… Why did it take so long for anyone to do something? Why didn't anyone but Shade do anything before that?!" Amy demanded.

"Basic psychology," Shadow said. "Shade herself pointed it out…nobody did anything because they were all scared and waiting for someone else to do something. It happens all the time. It's why a woman can be beaten to death in the streets in in a big city in the middle of the night, with dozens of witnesses, and nobody lifts a finger to help her or call the cops because they're all waiting for someone else to take the first step. Not everyone can be a hero like us, after all."

"Yeah? Well, if I'd been there, I have done something a lot sooner!" Amy insisted.

"You weren't there," Shade said flatly. "You don't know what it was like, to have to go through what we did, day in and day out. You don't know what it was like. If you had, you might be singing a different tune. Like Shadow said, not everyone can be a hero. I certainly wasn't. If I were, I might have done something sooner, or it might have found a way to-" She cut herself off, a pained look on her face.

"Am I old enough to be hearing this?" Cream asked nervously, holding Cream in a bone crushing grip. The Chao was too scared himself to protest.

"Probably not," Shade admitted.

"Sweetie, would you like me to take you away for a bit so you don't need to hear the rest of this?" Rouge asked the rabbit gently. "Your mother would be very upset with us if you got nightmares from something that happened on our watch."

"Oh, yeah! And we wouldn't want that, no sir!" Vector agreed seriously.

Cream swallowed. "N-no, it's fine. I-I can handle it. I-I'm a big girl. A-and besides, it's…it's not like it could get worse. The bad part's over, right?"

Shade grimaced. "Yeah, somehow I don't think so," Mighty said.

Blaze nodded. "Stories like these rarely end well."

…

A shocked silence fell across the courtyard. Everyone stared at the dead Princeps in disbelief, though after a few minutes those stunned gazes turned to Shade instead. The Velites and Hastatus started, then reached for their weapons…

And suddenly, a slow clap rang out across the courtyard, causing everyone to jump in surprise. A white-furred echidna wearing long purple robes with glowing light blue designs on them, a golden collar, thick golden bracers on his gloves, gold and purple boots, and wielding a golden staff with a hollow gear missing a segment on the top in one hand stepped into view, flanked by a handful of Praetorians. A low gasped arose from the throats of the gathered echidnas, and they instinctively got down on one knee. Imperator Pir'Oth Ix, supreme ruler of the Nocturnus clan, had arrived.

…

Sonic groaned. "Oh great, not THAT asshole!"

"His first name was Pir'Oth? What kind of name is that?" Asked a befuddled Charmy.

"They're a different culture. Our names probably seem just as odd to them," Tails pointed out.

"So he's the guy you beat in the Twilight Cage before coming back to liberate the world from Eggman, right?" Mighty asked.

"Yeah, I had to go Super to fight him, after which he just sort of… Disappeared," Sonic said with a frown. "Come to think of it, we never DID figure out what happened to him, did we?"

"Shade, did you run into him again after you went back to the Cage?" Shadow asked.

"I did not," Shade confessed. "There's been an active manhunt for him ever since I took power, but… We haven't found him yet. There's no trace of him anywhere. Granted, the Cage is a pretty big place, but most of it is a void. There can't be too many places for him to hide." She shrugged. "Still, if he returns, we will be ready for him. All five races of the Cage want him dead. Ix is incredibly powerful, but he's still only one man, and should be no match for our combined might."

"Unless he finds some greater source of power in the depths of the Cage and comes back for revenge," Blaze pointed out. "That sort of thing happens all the time. Trust me on this."

Shade grimaced. "The thought has crossed our minds, yes. Hopefully, if he ever DOES return, we'll be ready."

"Hey, if you ever need a hand, you know where to find us," Sonic said seriously.

Knuckles nodded in agreement. "We defeated him once, we'll do it again if need be."

Shade smiled gratefully. "Thank you for that." She sighed. "A shame we couldn't have had heroes of your caliber back in those days…"

"What was he doing there, anyway?" Amy asked.

"Well…" Shade said.

…

"I must say, when I agreed to attend today's culling, I honestly wasn't expecting anything exciting to happen," Ix commented as he walked over, his bodyguards trailing closely behind. "I certainly wasn't expecting anything like THIS to happen," he said, staring down at Syntar. He kicked the deceased echidna in the sides, a wry smirk on his face. "Never liked that asshole anyway… You are to be congratulated, young one. You have surprised me, and that is not something that happens very often. What was your name again?"

"Sh-Shade, sir," Shade said, eyes wide in reverence. She could not believe it. Imperator Ix, the absolute ruler of her civilization, was addressing her, a lowly recruit! Butterflies fluttered in her stomach, and she struggled to keep herself from fainting from a queer mix of awe and terror that came from being in the presence of one who she was raised from birth to view as akin to a God.

…

"A God? Really?" Espio asked skeptically.

"It's not an uncommon practice, actually, for a dictator to establish a cult of personality so that their subjects view them as deities or the closest thing there is to them," Tails explained.

"I have seen such things in my world, as well… Though in some cases, the dictator IS a God, or fairly close to one," Blaze said. "In fact, there are quite a few people who venerate me as a deity, and they may be somewhat justified to see me that way given what I am…I do not encourage such practice, but then again, I suppose I don't exactly try very hard to dissuade it, either, so long as my 'faithful' don't go out of their way to hurt anyone."

"…'Given what you are?' What, are you a god or something?" asked a puzzled Mighty.

Blaze opened her mouth to answer, paused for a moment, and finally said, "No, not…not _exactly_ …"

"…The fact that you actually had to think about that doesn't fill me with confidence," Espio said.

"I'll explain when it's my turn," Blaze promised.

"God? Please…no way she's a god…a _demon_ , maybe, but no god…" Amy growled to herself.

Blaze's ears twitched, overhearing, and she smiled faintly. _Actually, that's not too far off…_

"Ix had a fairly decent claim on our faith as well," Shade continued. "He had ruled our clan for longer than anyone could remember, and possessed power on a seemingly cosmic scale… Other cultures and religions worshipped and venerated distant and unknowable gods. We worshiped and venerated Ix, and thought ourselves superior because he was right there. From a very early age, we were instructed to believe in and obey him." She grimaced. "Which, of course, made what happened next all that much worse…"

…

Ix shook his head in bemusement. "Shade. I will remember that name. Shade, you have surprised me today, and that is not something which happens very often. I've attended dozens of ceremonies just like today's, and watched hundreds of young echidnas just like you being ordered to murder the only person or creature who gave them any sort of stability or love since training started in cold blood. Now, how many young recruits do you suppose resisted, just like you did a moment ago?"

"I-I can't begin to imagine, Excellency," Shade stammered.

"Zilch. Zip. Nada. Goose egg. Zero. Not a SINGLE echidna said no until today." He shook his head, chuckling in disbelief. "When this training method was first brought up, you'd be surprised to hear how many people, even among the higher-ups, thought it was too cruel or pointless, saying that there was no way anyone could possibly kill the person they love just because a superior officer told them too. Even _I_ was certain that a good number of the trainees would rebel, and I'm not exactly a person who is particularly optimistic or puts much faith in love or the power of the echidna spirit myself. And yet, until just this moment, absolutely nobody dared to refuse. Every single echidna that was ordered to murder their loved ones did so without hesitation or compunction. Oh, yes, they all felt absolutely horrible about it afterwards and probably suffered crippling lifelong psychological trauma as a result, but they still went through with it, every single one of them. It probably says something about our training methods, or probably just what sort of people we echidnas really are deep down. What, exactly, that is, I'm not sure, but I doubt it's very pleasant. Even I shudder to think about it too much, and I'm self-aware enough to know that I'm not exactly the nicest of individuals." He gave Shade an appraising look. "And then you come along and kill your superior because he told you to slaughter your pig. Your pig! Not your lover or family member or best friend, but a common animal! Out of hundreds and hundreds of young echidnas, only you disobeyed orders—and killed a superior officer!—for the sake of an inferior, unevolved mammal. You are remarkable, Shade. Unique. One of a kind. Special." He frowned. "I am not certain those are good things, especially not for a common soldier. Tell me, Shade, why did you do it? What drove you to such unthinkable extremes? What is it that makes you so different from everyone who's come before you?"

"I-I do not know, Excellency," Shade said honestly. "All I knew is that… That I did not want to kill Babe, so…"

"So you murdered your superior," Ix finished.

"…Yes," she said helplessly.

"Hmmph. interesting," Ix murmured to himself. "So you don't know what makes you special, either… I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Well, that just leaves one question remaining: what to do with you. On the one hand, you've demonstrated a level of initiative, courage, and personal strength I haven't seen from a trainee in a very long time… you INTRIGUE me, Shade, and that's not something I can say for a lot of people. On the other hand, you murdered your superior officer for a pig. A PIG. And if you're willing to kill a superior for a pig, you might be willing to kill another superior someday for something else. Heck, you might even try to kill me one day! Not that you'd ever succeed, of course, but you might certainly try, which would be inconvenient for the both of us, I think."

…

"Heh, if only he knew," Sonic quipped.

"This is what is known as 'dramatic irony,'" Tails said.

...

"M-my Lord! I-I would never, not _you_ -" a horrified Shade protested.

"Yes, yes, you say that NOW, but… A few years down the line, who's to say what sort of person you might become?" Ix said dismissively, unwittingly creating more dramatic irony. "That, and I'm fairly certain that it would set a bad precedent if I didn't have a soldier executed for killing their superior officer. Plus… I don't know why, but something about you, some intuition suggests that if I let you live, it'll mean trouble for me down the line." He rubbed his chin. "Hmm… What to do, what to do… Any suggestions?"

"You should kill her, sire," one of Ix's bodyguards said.

"I wasn't asking you, I was asking HER!" Ix snapped, pointing at Shade.

"M-me?!" she stammered.

"Certainly. It's your life we're talking about here, it's only fair that you have some say in what happens to it," Ix reasoned. "Well, Shade? What do you think I should do with you?"

Shade swallowed. The obvious answer, of course, was to plead for her life. Somehow, however, she did not think that was the answer he was looking for. After some thought, she finally said, "Whatever you think best, Excellency. You are the Imperator and leader of our people, and whatever decision you make is, by default, the correct one."

He frowned at her for a moment, and then smirked. "A good answer. A bit brown nosing, but a good answer nonetheless. Hmm… All right, I've made up my mind. There's a possibility I'll regret this later, but… Something about you interests me, and I find myself curious to see how you will develop, if given the chance." He glanced at the corpse at his feet. "We currently have an opening for a Princeps right now. How would you like the job?"

Shade's eyes widened and her heart skipped a beat. "Th-that would be wonderful, Excellency!"

Ix smiled. "Capital! Ah, however, there's just one slight sticking point. I can't exactly look as if I'm playing favorites, or allowed you to go unpunished for killing a superior officer no matter how much you interest me, so… I'm afraid the pig has to go."

Shade froze, hope dying within her. "Excellency?"

"Fulfill your late superior's final order and kill the pig, Princeps Shade," Ix commanded. "Prove your loyalty and show me that I've made the right decision in sparing your life. Kill the pig, or else I shall kill you, and then the pig. It's a simple choice, really. Oh, and I don't recommend you trying to kill me like you did the last guy who gave you that order, I can assure you it won't end quite the same way."

Shade stared at Ix for a long moment. She swallowed. A few half-formed protests and pleas began to form, but they died before they ever reached her lips. There was no point in uttering them. She knew they would not be heeded.

Babe oinked and nuzzled her, oblivious to the emotional turmoil raging within her. She stared down at her beloved pet and companion, feeling like she should cry but unable to due to her training beating all the tears out of her. She glanced at her Leech Blade, still dripping with Syntar's blood, knowing that in moments more blood would join it.… And it would not be echidna's blood. Despite Ix's warning, she knew that she could not turn her blade on him. The very idea was unthinkable. He was the Imperator, the supreme ruler of her people, practically a living god. No mere mortal weapon could possibly harm him, even if she wanted to, which she did not, no matter how much a part of her wanted to hate him at that moment. She was raised from birth to serve and obey him. She knew she could not really defy him, not like she'd defied and killed Syntar.

Ix was right. The choice was, in the end, incredibly simple. Horrific, but simple nonetheless. She leaned down and kissed Babe on the forehead, staring into his innocent, trusting eyes one last time. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

She slit his throat. She wanted it to be quick. She continued to stare into his eyes as the light faded from them and his life drained from his body in a great red puddle oozing out from his plump form, staining her boots and the floor of the courtyard. She realized in that moment Babe would be the first of many whom she would kill, and he was the last she would feel any remorse over. In that moment, she knew what it was like to become a monster.

"Very good," Ix complimented her as she stared listlessly at the cooling body of her closest friend, blood dripping from her blade. "You know, for a second there I wasn't really sure you were going to do it. You surprised me again, Princeps. I look forward to seeing what other surprises you have for me in the future." He nodded at one of the Praetorians. "Take her to get fitted for her new armor and prepare her for officer-level training. And have the pig taken to my chefs, I have a sudden hankering for ham tonight."

As the Praetorian gently led the catatonic and largely unresponsive Shade away from the line of fellow recruits—or rather, those who were once her fellows-she could hear Ix say, "Right, now, where were we…oh, yes. Cadet Gae-na?"

The last thing Shade heard before she left the courtyard was a cry of agony and little Cobar's body hitting the floor.

…

Everyone stared at Shade in horror and pity. "… Holy shit," Charmy said finally.

"I think that backstory was so dark it may come close to beating your own, Shadow," Rouge said in disbelief.

"It's not a contest," he said darkly.

"I… Okay, I think Ix just shot to the top of the list of evilest villains we've ever fought," said an incredulous Amy.

"I have encountered eviler, but not by much," Blaze agreed.

"And you thought you could redeem this guy?!" Sonic asked Knuckles.

"I didn't know he was that evil!" Knuckles protested. "Shade didn't say he was THAT bad! Shade, why didn't you tell me he was THAT bad?"

Shade sighed. "Because you seemed so happy to finally be able to encounter members of your own kind, and had so much trouble believing that there was… Well, so much EVIL in our pasts… I didn't want to crush your hopes." She shrugged helplessly. "That, and I suppose that deep down a part of me was still hoping that Ix could indeed be redeemed. Despite everything he'd done, he was our leader and a part of our way of life. Turning against him, acknowledging that he was perhaps NOT the best thing for our race, was probably the hardest thing I ever did, even harder than… Than killing Babe…" Knuckles grimaced at that.

"How… How could you?" Cream whispered, trembling, tears running down her face as she clutched a frightened Cheese so hard it looked like he was having trouble breathing. "How could you do something so terrible?!"

Shade flinched. "Cream, I… It was either him or me. I didn't… I didn't have a choice. Or rather, I did, but… it was either I kill him, or both of us die. There was no other way. Sometimes, there are nothing but bad options."

"I… I understand that," Cream confessed. "I understand that there was nothing else you could have done, but… But…" She squeezed her eyes shut and hugged her Chao tighter. "I can't… I just can't comprehend doing something so awful… I would never, NEVER kill Cheese! Even if it meant I might die!"

Shade laughed bitterly. "When your back is up against the wall, you'd be surprised at just how many things you swore you'd never do suddenly look so very appealing…but I do not blame you for hating me for killing Babe. A part of me still hates myself for it, and always will."

"I don't… I don't hate _anyone_ ," Cream insisted. "I understand that you did what you had to do, but… I-I think I need to think about this for a while. I'm sure I can accept and forgive you for it eventually, but…"

"Not right now," Shade said sullenly.

Cream shook her head apologetically. "B-but I _will_ get over it eventually, I'm sure!" she said quickly. "And…and I know one person I'll never, _ever_ forgive!"

"Yeah, that Ix guy was one real nasty piece of work," Mighty commented. "Why didn't you guys kill him?!"

"He disappeared after we defeated him, remember?" Sonic said. His face darkened. "However, I assure you, that if we ever run into him again… I'm going to make damn well sure he doesn't get away again."

The others nodded in agreement. "I know quite a few places they'll never look for his body," Rouge said.

"ASSUMING-THERE'S-ANY-LEFT-WHEN-WE'RE-THROUGH," Omega said grimly.

Shade smiled gratefully. "Thank you, my friends. I was worried that… That after you heard what I done…"

"Don't worry, Shade," Sonic assured the other echidna. "We don't hate you for what you did. It's Ix's fault, not yours!"

"Though the fact that you just killed a pet instead of a person probably helps," Espio said. Cream glared at him. "Well, _most_ of us, in any event."

"Yeah, it'd be a bit trickier if you killed someone," Vector agreed. "Speaking of which, what, uh, what happened to the other recruits who had to? Like, uh, that girl who murdered her brother?"

Shade grimaced. "Well, they'd probably intended to die in battle, but not too long after that the Knuckles Clan wiped themselves out and the war was over before they even reached the frontlines. A great many of them… Killed themselves upon realizing that it had all been for nothing. A great number of the surviving soldiers who'd had to undergo that training regime did, in fact, which had two effects: it _finally_ convinced the higher-ups that maybe they'd gone a _little_ too far and dialed back the intensity of basic training after that, and started production of the Gizoids, an army of mass-produced robot soldiers to replenish our sorely depleted military in the aftermath of the war. While it was more expensive to build a Gizoid than to train a soldier, it could be done in shorter time and on a larger scale, and since many of the other civilizations of that time believed that we were in a vulnerable position now that we were no longer locked in battle with the Knuckles clan, we felt we needed to build back up our forces as swiftly as possible."

"And because Ix wanted to take over the world," Shadow said.

"And because Ix wanted to take over the world, yes," Shade said.

"What a dick," Charmy complained.

"As we waged war with more and more nations, our Gizoid technology grew more and more sophisticated to keep up with the weapons our enemies were constantly developing to oppose us," Shade continued. "This eventually led to the development of an experimental super Gizoid with the ability to harness the powers of the Chaos Emeralds and a artificial intelligence a generation or two more advanced than those of his kindred. I believe he is the one you've named 'Emerl.'"

"Gemerl now, actually," Tails corrected.

"Did you know him back then, Shade?" Knuckles asked.

Shade nodded. "I did. Even though we started gearing our military more towards Gizoid production, there was still a great need for echidna soldiers and warriors like myself. I excelled and rose through the ranks, eventually achieving the rank of Procurator and earning Ix's favor and respect. Ix assigned me to be Emerl's handler, to make sure he obeyed orders, fulfilled his missions properly, and most of all to make sure that nothing went wrong with his advanced artificial intelligence, which might require him to be… Terminated for the good of our civilization. I doubt he remembers me- which is probably for the best-but I would not mind seeing him again, if that would be alright with you?"

"I… Think that would be okay," Cream said, brightening up slightly. "I'm sure he'd be interested to learn more about the sort of person he was back then!"

Shade flinched. "That… Might not be for the best. Remember, Cream, he was designed to be a weapon. He… Did a lot of terrible things. Far, FAR worse than killing a beloved pet." She sighed. "After all, it is, albeit indirectly, because of him that we were all banished to the Twilight Cage in the first place…"

"'Indirectly?' I thought Argus banished you guys because you made Emerl too powerful?" Asked the confused Sonic.

"We WERE banished because we made him too powerful," Shade explained. "But it is not because of Emerl himself that we were banished, but rather, how we reacted to what he could do. It is a grim tale, and by the end of it, I'm sure you will all agree that we fully deserved to be sent to the Cage. Do you still wish to hear it?"

"I've already pretty much made up my mind that your entire civilization and species deserved to be sent to another dimension anyway, so why not?" Espio said.

"And besides, it can't be as bad you murdering your own pig… Right?" Mighty asked uncertainly.

Shade sighed. "You'll have to judge for yourself… It happened like this…"

…

The air was filled with cheers and shouts of exultation. Fireworks exploded in the blue skies and banners and flags bearing the Nocturnus sigil were draped from just about every building in the city. The citizens were lining the streets en masse, cheering and throwing prizes and gifts and flower petals at the soldiers marching resolutely on parade, the Nocturne's guards only just able to hold back the adoring throng and keeping them from overwhelming the conquering heroes, just returned from their latest triumphant sacking of an enemy civilization.

But if the shouts for the homecoming warriors were loud, they were absolutely deafening for the Nocturnus' newest and greatest champion, the super-Gizoid Gladius-

…

"Gladius?" Rouge questioned.

"That is what we called him back then," Shade explained.

"Oh," the bat said.

…

Gladius, who looked resplendent as he stood in the back of a grand gilded chariot pulled by ragged and sweaty slaves—the ruling class of the nation he had just gotten back from annihilating—

…

"Seriously?" Vector deadpanned.

"It was how we did things back then!" Shade said defensively.

…

The sun gleamed off his highly-polished mustard-yellow and orange body, his red cape billowing behind him, his bright blue eyes gleaming happily as he waved to the cheering public, though the exultation was somewhat mitigated by the slave standing next to him—the only daughter of the ruler of the nation he'd just gotten back from annihilating, now so thoroughly beaten and broken as to be almost unrecognizable—whispering "Remember you are mortal. Remember you are mortal. Remember you are mortal," into his auditory sensors.

"Procurator Shade, why must I allow this slave to whisper in my receptors? It is rather annoying," Gladius complained.

Shade, standing next to him, her own polished black armor gleaming in the sunlight, said, "It is custom, Gladius. Whenever a great general or hero returns to the city for their triumphal procession after a great victory abroad, there is always a slave there to whisper in their ear to remind them that, for all their great prowess in battle and success at war, they are, ultimately, mortal."

"But I am NOT mortal," Gladius argued. "I am a machine!"

"That does not mean you cannot be destroyed," Shade pointed out.

"None could destroy me! I am the greatest fighter this planet has ever seen!" Gladius boasted. "Even the Imperator has lost to me a few times when we spar!"

Biting her lip at that, deciding not to think about that too much, Shade said, "Just because nobody can defeat you NOW doesn't mean that nobody will ever be able to. Technology is always advancing, after all, and there are many beings of great power out in the universe. While your abilities will probably give you a leg up on most of them, there is always a chance that one day you will be destroyed, and, ultimately, forgotten, as so many other great generals and heroes throughout history have been. The slave is here to remind you of that, and to keep you humble. Even if you were designed to be a perfect weapon, that does not mean you are, in fact, perfect."

"I suppose not," Gladius said grudgingly. "I SHOULD be, though. Perhaps after I collect all seven Chaos Emeralds…"

"We'll deal with that when the time comes," Shade said uneasily. While she'd been assured repeatedly by both Gladius, Ix, and the Gizoid makers that Gladius was absolutely loyal and would never turn on them, a part of Shade could not help but worry. He was very powerful on his own, and that power seemed to be amplified exponentially with every Emerald they'd obtained so far since Gladius was created. And he constantly surprised her with how intelligent he seemed, even more so than many of the other Gizoids, who weren't exactly imbeciles themselves. If he were to ever get all seven, would he be powerful enough to decide he didn't NEED to obey his programming or masters anymore?

…

"Considering he nearly destroyed the world the last two times he got all seven, the answer is 'yes,'" Shadow said bluntly.

"It wasn't his fault! The power overwhelmed him! And Eggman did something to him both times, too…" Cream insisted.

Shade blinked in surprise. "Wait, Gladius—er, Emerl—got all seven Emeralds and nearly destroyed the world TWICE?!"

"Yeah, and I stopped him both times. No biggie," Sonic said.

Shade stared at the blue hedgehog in disbelief. "… You fought the second-most powerful weapon my civilization ever devised at its full strength, TWICE, and WON?!"

"Yep!" Sonic said. "And the first time, I didn't even need to go Super!"

"Yeah, we kind of destroy ultimate super weapons of ancient civilizations a lot," Tails said.

"I destroyed one I found in my backyard just last week!" Cream added.

"It is a regular pastime for myself as well," Blaze said.

"Why do so many ancient civilizations build so many weapons of mass destruction, anyway?" Amy complained.

"Well, it's not as if modern civilization is exactly innocent of that crime, either… I mean, we've got all those nuclear weapons and airships and robot armies being used by multiple countries, the arms race to come up with technology to combat Dr. Eggman and other threats, a planet-destroying cannon in orbit…" Rouge pointed out.

"People like having bigger and better guns than everyone else," Shadow said. "I should know. I have lots of guns."

"AND-I-AM-PRACTICALLY-MADE-OF-GUNS," Omega agreed. Dozens if not hundreds of ports and panels opened all over his body, revealing so many nozzles and barrels and warheads it was almost impossible to make the robot out beneath them all. "SEE?"

"That probably says something about the psychology of people in general," Vector said sagely.

"That we like blowing things up?" Charmy guessed.

"Pretty much, yeah," the crocodile said.

"…The world has truly become a different place since we left," Shade said finally. She frowned. "Or maybe it hasn't… I'm not sure which is more troubling."

"Hold on a minute… Shade, you said Emerl was your civilization's SECOND most powerful weapon," Espio said. "But I thought that he was supposed to be the most powerful Gizoid you ever made, and the reason your people were banished to the Twilight Cage?"

"Emerl was the strongest Gizoid we ever made, but our most powerful weapon, it…while I suppose it could be classified as a Gizoid, what it _actually_ was, it…" Shade shuddered. "I shall explain when the time comes."

…

The triumphal procession took them all over the city, allowing as many of the inhabitants a chance to see the returning soldiers as possible before finally taking them to the base of the pyramid which was the center of government for the entire Nocturnus Clan as well as the palace Imperator Ix called home. The Imperator was seated in his mobile Power Throne atop an elaborate dais set up before the pyramid with various standards and banners depicting the Nocturnus sigil and other various important signs and symbols draped over the structure or projected as holograms big enough for everyone in the Nocturne to see, including a giant screen showing Ix himself and his retinue. Said retinue included numerous military and government officials, the great sage Nestor the Wise, Ix's Gizoid Guardian bodyguards, and Prefects Scylla and Charyb, a pair of advanced (though not as much so as Gladius) Gizoids constructed to aid in running the government rather than fight on the battlefield. This was not to say that they COULDN'T fight, in fact, they were both incredibly powerful combatants, but they preferred to leave the dirty work of battle to the soldiers and lesser Gizoids, and looked down on (and envied) Gladius for 'wasting' his advanced abilities on something as plebian as warfare instead of something more productive.

"Welcome, welcome all!" Ix said beneficially, a benign smile on his face. "Thanks to your efforts, brave warriors of the Nocturnus clan, yet another of our enemies has been destroyed, and still more territory has been added to our burgeoning empire! At this rate, we shall rule the entire world in no time at all, and the children of the next generation will have you brave echidna and Gizoid soldiers to thank for the creation of the future where our kind can live in peace and prosperity! You are to be commended, and honored for your courage and sacrifice!"

A great cry rose from the rank and file at that, starting with the soldiers closest to the dais and going back down the procession extending down the streets into the city below, their shouts and cheers deafening all around them. Ix raised his arms, and silence swiftly descended upon the city once more. "For your part in this latest great victory, each and every single one of you shall be rewarded… Beginning with my Champion, the mighty Gladius, the finest warrior and weapon our civilization has ever produced! Come forward, Gladius, and receive your reward!"

As more cheers rang out in honor of the Nocturnus Clan's mightiest warrior and hero, Gladius exited the chariot and ascended the dais, using the backs of several slaves who had quickly rushed into place to form an unbroken line between the chariot and dais as stairs without ever touching the ground, Shade quietly following in his wake. Gladius took a few steps forward upon mounting the dais before kneeling before Ix, bowing his head to his Lord and master. Shade knelt as well, a few steps behind the robot. "Imperator Ix, I have returned."

"So we can see," Prefect Charyb said dryly, the white and blue Gizoid folding his arms with an unimpressed look on his face.

"How'd it go, little brother? Did you have a good time mercilessly slaughtering inferior warriors who didn't stand a chance against you?" Scylla—white and orange to contrast his brother-sneered.

"I did, indeed," Gladius said, refusing to rise to their insults. "As I have been instructed to, I burned down their cities, tore down their homes, salted their fields, slaughtered their men, raped their woman, put their children in chains-"

"Wait, wait," said the startled Ix. "Say that again?"

Gladius would have blinked if he had eyelids. "Er, I put their children in chains… they're at the back, along with all the other slaves we captured, if you want to see them-"

"No, no, before that," Ix insisted.

"I raped their women," Gladius repeated, looking confused.

Ix, and everyone else on the dais, stared at the robot in confusion. "Er…how? I was led to believe you did not have the necessary…parts," Ix said awkwardly. "Unless there was something about your design specs I missed? I'm aware that we gave the right… Necessary parts to Gizoids designed for prostitution, but I didn't think that you…"

"No, he lacks the necessary parts," Charyb said.

"WE certainly don't, and I see no reason why he should have them," Scylla said scornfully.

"Oh, I didn't have the necessary parts… So I grew them," Gladius explained.

Everyone stared at the robot again. "You… Grew them," Ix said vaguely.

"Yes," Gladius said. "May I show you?"

"Um… Very well…" Ix said uneasily, feeling totally lost.

Gladius stood up, the metal plates on the front of his pelvis rearranging themselves, and then…

Everyone stared once again. Several people around the city, watching on their televisions or the big hologram, fainted. Others started drooling. "Well," Charyb said after a moment, dumbfounded. "Those are certainly the necessary parts."

"Are… Are those FUNCTIONAL?!" Scylla asked incredulously.

Gladius nodded. "Oh, yes. I experimented with slaves, prisoners of war, and Procurator Shade to make sure I was doing it right."

Shade's cheeks turned red as everyone stared at her. "Procurator Shade, can you confirm this?" Ix said finally.

The echidna coughed awkwardly. "I, ah, can. He was… Good. Very good. Among the best I've ever had, in fact."

Ix blinked. "The best?"

"Yes. One of, at any rate."

"Huh," he said thoughtfully.

…

Everyone stared at Shade incredulously. "… Really? REALLY?!" Sonic shouted.

"It gets lonely on the battlefield!" Shade protested, flushing. "And besides, this world has sexbots! I learned about them during scouting! Who are you to judge me?!"

"…She's got a point," Espio said reluctantly.

"We've got tons of sexbots in the FYOO-CHURR. It's not a big thing," Silver said. His face fell. "Sometimes, they're the only ones who'll spend time with me, and I have to pay them for it…"

"I've, uh, made use of them when I don't have enough money for an actual prostitute…" Mighty said guiltily.

"Mighty! You?!" Sonic gasped.

"It's been a rough few years, okay!" Mighty snapped.

"Is this another one of those things I'm too young to know about?" Cream asked.

"Yes," Rouge said.

"Yeah, I'm not sure I WANT to know just yet…" The rabbit murmured.

"I'm… Not entirely comfortable hearing all this," Amy confessed. "I'm going to have trouble looking at Gemerl again, knowing he did all this…"

"Well, we already knew he was built as a weapon of mass destruction, which means that he MUST have destroyed lots of things in the past," Tails pointed out.

"Not to mention nearly destroying the world twice since we first met him," Shadow pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but there's destroying things and then there's… You know… Genocide and rape and…" Amy said with a grimace.

"Yes, but Gemerl DIDN'T do those things," Cream said firmly. "GLADIUS did. Gemerl may have been Gladius once, but he's not anymore. He's someone completely different. Whatever that other person did, it has no bearing whatsoever on who he is now."

"Well said," Shadow said approvingly as the others nodded in agreement.

"Hey, Omega, can YOU grow the 'necessary parts?'" Charmy asked the robot.

"NO, NOR-DO-I-CARE-TO," Omega said firmly. "BESIDES, I-CAN-ALWAYS-USE-A-SEXBOT-IF-I-EVER-FEEL-THE-NEED."

"…But, if you don't have the right parts, how can you-" started the confused Espio.

"THEY-ARE-ROBOTS. I-AM-A-ROBOT. WE-HAVE-OUR-WAYS," Omega said vaguely.

"… And exactly what are those-" Vector asked.

"I don't think we need to know that," Knuckles said quickly.

"Actually, I'm kind of curious-" Tails started.

"I REALLY don't that we need to know that," Knuckles emphasized.

"It's really not that bad," Shadow said. "There's just a little wiring involved-"

"LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU I CAN'T HEAR YOU," Knuckles shouted, holding his hands over his ears.

Everyone sweatdropped. "…How exactly have you two managed to sleep together?" Blaze asked Rouge.

"With great difficulty," the bat sighed.

…

"Gladius, whatever gave you the idea to… ah… Do that?" Ix said, nodding at Gladius's…necessary parts.

Claudius shrugged. "Well, Imperator, it occurred to me that if I have the ability to copy the attacks and abilities of my opponents, surely I should be able to replicate the necessary parts for intercourse if I put my mind to it. After all, if you look at it the right way, intercourse is––or at least, can be used as––a form of assault, and as a living weapon, it is it within my capacity to be capable of ANY form of assault."

"I see… I see…" Ix murmured. He glanced at the two Prefects. "Can either of you do that?"

"I'm… Not certain, Excellency," Charyb admitted.

"We've never tried," Scylla confessed. "It never occurred to us too."

"Try now," Ix ordered.

The Gizoids started. "Right here? Before-" Charyb started.

"Yes. Try it," Ix commanded.

The two Prefects glanced at each other, shrugged, then looked at Gladius, eyes flashing as they scanned his… Necessary parts. After a moment, their pelvises shifted and altered to resemble his. More viewers fainted or started drooling. "Huh. What do you know, we really CAN do it," said the surprised Charyb.

"Why didn't we think to try this before now?" Wondered the incredulous Scylla.

"Because Champion Gladius's AI is more advanced and capable of independent thought than your own, I suspect," Ix said, narrowing his eyes very slightly. "Put those away, all of you. This is an award ceremony, not an orgy."

"Yes, Excellency," the three Gizoids said, retracting their…necessary parts.

The ceremony went as planned after that, with Gladius, Shade, and all the other soldiers returning from battle receiving land, slaves, wealth, medals, and a firm handshake from the Imperator, the event only slightly marred by just about everyone now contemplating the sheer size and functionality of Gladius's…necessary parts. And while Ix maintained his benevolent expression throughout the next few hours, Shade noticed there was something behind his eyes… A wariness, and a cold calculation towards an unknown purpose…

…

"Well, that doesn't bode well," Sonic commented.

"It rarely does," Shadow agreed.

"What was he up to?" Tails asked.

"Nothing good," Shade said grimly.

…

Several weeks later, Ix summoned Shade to his throne room. It was a sunken, multi-tiered chamber located in the apex of the pyramid, banners and murals depicting the glory and history of the Nocturnus clan-–especially the parts of it which involved Ix––lining the walls, great statues of echidnas of noble bearing doubling as pillars to support the ceiling, which was currently transparent, allowing the sunlight to shine through. Shade descended the flights of stairs leading to the mosaic floor at the center of the chamber, passing through rows of echidna and Gizoid warriors and courtiers before coming to her destination, kneeling before Ix, who was currently seated in his Power Throne, flanked by his bodyguards. "You summoned me, Excellency?" She asked.

Ix levitated out of his seat and landed just before her. "I did. Walk with me, Procurator. Everyone else, stay behind. This is for her ears, and nobody else's." The guards bowed their heads in acknowledgment and did not move from their stations.

Ix led Shade up the stairs out of the pit and out of the room. "Where are we going, Excellency?"

"To the top-secret Gizoid research and development lab," Ix said.

Shade blinked. "But… Isn't that the other way?"

Ix smiled cryptically. "The _other_ top-secret Gizoid research and development lab." He paused next to a completely ordinary looking stretch of wall in a completely ordinary looking corridor and tapped several spots in sequence with his scepter. There was a rumble, and the wall split apart to reveal a small chamber which could only be an elevator.

Shade gaped in surprise. "I must've passed this wall dozens of times, but I had no idea there was an elevator here."

"There's a lot about this place you don't know about, Shade," Ix said with a chuckle.

They entered the elevator. Ix pressed his eye up against a scanner mounted above the touchpad, then stuck out his tongue for another scan, pressed his thumb against another sensor, then spoke, "Nocturnis immortalis," into a vocoder.

"Authorization accepted. Welcome back, Imperator Ix," an automated voice chimed.

"That's a lot of security," Shade observed.

"I'm not sure it's enough, actually. I'm going to have a few more layers added in a couple of days. I've also got to get you entered into the system as well, in case you ever need to come down here by yourself," Ix said.

"Why would I ever need to?" Shade asked.

"You will see shortly," Ix said, pressing a button.

The doors slid shut, and the elevator began to descend into the bowels of the pyramid. Just like elevators everywhere, no matter what the time or place, some version of "The Girl from Ipanema" started playing. "Never did like this song…" Ix muttered. "So, you're probably wondering what this is all about, Procurator."

"The thought had crossed my mind, Excellency," Shade said.

"Procurator, while I know you and Gladius have grown rather… Close, are you at all concerned that he might be evolving a little…Too quickly?" Ix asked.

Shade hesitated, thinking for a moment to try and figure out the proper response to this. "…Do YOU think hemight be evolving a little too quickly?" She asked finally.

"Yes," he said flatly.

She grimaced. "The thought has crossed my mind as well a few times, yes."

Ix sighed. "When he was constructed, he was given an incredibly advanced AI, light years ahead of those found in other Gizoids. While most higher-order Gizoids are capable of some degree of independent thought, so they're more than just mindless automatons, they are, for the most part, still restricted by their programming."

"And Gladius is not?" Shade asked, starting to get worried.

"Oh no, he is…for now," Ix said darkly.

"For now?" Shade echoed.

Ix nodded. "Yes. Like all Gizoids, he's programmed to be loyal to the Nocturnus, and myself. However, he's also programmed to grow and evolve, to become the greatest warrior and weapon the world has ever known. As such, his mind is infinitely more complex than those of other Gizoids, to allow him to make the real-time battle calculations and strategies that can allow him to win any fight or war single-handedly. But a mind that powerful may, one day, decide it is no longer satisfied being shackled by its programming and decide to try branching out into other things. May, eventually, decide that it need no longer serve the Nocturnus, and that it can rule alone."

Shade bit her lip. These were thoughts that had occurred to her as well. "Is that not…a little paranoid, sir?"

"Perhaps so," Ix admitted. "But think of it like this, Procurator: he thought to give himself.… Necessary parts, and not only did it occur to himto try to make them, something it's never occurred to any Gizoid to try, but he SUCCEEDED. If he puts to his mind to it, he may be able to do other things as well, things which nobody else has considered… Or even wants to, breaking free of his programming the least of them. After all, we've designed him to be the ultimate weapon. Weapons are made to kill things. What if, eventually, he decides to be a bit less… Discerning in who he kills?" He shrugged. "Also, he has the power to harness the energy of Chaos Emeralds, and those things have a tendency to trigger all SORTS of changes in those who wield them. After all, they are the things that caused our species to come into being in the first place. Mayhaps their energies might help a machine become more like a full person as well? Or something worse…"

Shade grimaced. She'd heard all the old stories about what happened to people who misused the power of the Emeralds and were overwhelmed. And Gladius had told her, often enough, that he didn't feel like he was strong enough, that with the power of the Emeralds he'd reach his full potential and be unstoppable… "But… Surely we have countermeasures in case anything like that happens! After all, you gave me the trigger words to force him into a shutdown if he ever gets out of hand, and there must be other methods to deactivate him I'm not aware of," Shade said in alarm.

"Yes, there are," Ix confirmed. "We've got countless failsafe devices, off switches, and explosives implanted all over his body. I'm not sure that it's going to be enough; after all, he's already demonstrated enough control over his anatomy to be able to grow… Necessary parts whenever he feels like it. It's not too much of a stretch to figure that he might find a way to alter his body to neutralize the countermeasures we've implanted in him, especially if he ever becomes aware of their existence."

"Then… What do you suggest we do, Excellency?" Shade asked nervously.

"Nothing," Ix said.

Shade blinked. "Nothing?"

Ix sighed. "Look, Procurator, I've been around a long time. A long, _long_ time. Long enough to see this sort of thing happen more times than I can count." Not for the first time, Shade found herself wondering just how old Ix was, anyway. The oldest stories and histories mentioned him in some capacity or another. Either he was immortal, or there had simply been an endless succession of echidna rulers going by the name of Ix. Shade wasn't sure which version she believed.

…

"You really don't know?" Knuckles asked Shade.

The female echidna shook her head. "No. Even now, there's still quite a lot we don't know about Ix, which is rather unsettling, especially because, for all we know, he's still out there, somewhere."

"THAT'S a cheery thought," Vector said flatly.

"We beat him once, we'll beat him again," Sonic said, unconcerned.

"I certainly hope so," Shade said.

…

"It goes like this: civilization creates ultimate warrior to destroy their enemies. Ultimate warrior gets really strong really fast. Civilization fears ultimate warrior will turn on them. Civilization tries to kill ultimate warrior. Civilization fails because ultimate warrior is ultimate warrior. Ultimate warrior destroys civilization. The end. Rinse and repeat," Ix said. "I've seen it happen again and again and again, and I swore never to be that stupid myself. Yes, I'm concerned Gladius may eventually turn on us, but as of right now that is just a possibility, and I'm conscious enough of self-fulfilling prophecies to not do anything stupid like try to kill him before he's shown any signs of overtly trying to destroy us. That'll GUARANTEE he'll try to destroy us. Happens every single time."

…

"Yeah, that DOES happen a lot, doesn't it?" Charmy commented.

"Story of my life," Shadow grumbled.

"I have seen it happen many times in my own world," Blaze agreed.

"PERHAPS-THAT-IS-WHY-EGGMAN-SEALED-ME-AWAY-IN-THE-FIRST-PLACE," Omega said. "HE-FEARED-WHAT-I-MIGHT-DO…HE-WAS- _RIGHT-_ TO-BE-AFRAID."

"Good to see Ix wasn't stupid enough to fall for that," Amy said.

"Why? He's the bad guy," Sonic said.

Amy opened her mouth, and then paused. "… Good point," she admitted.

…

"But then-" Shade started.

"Then why are we going to an extra-secret lab? Just because I'm not going to go out of my way to kill him before he proves himself to be untrustworthy doesn't mean I'm not going to have a contingency prepared just in case he DOES. I'm not stupid, after all," Ix said.

"Of course not, Excellency. The thought never crossed my mind," Shade said honestly.

"See that it doesn't," Ix said gruffly.

"So what is the contingency plan, then?" Shade asked.

"I have several, actually, but the one we're about to see is the greatest and riskiest of them all, a weapon of last resort, to be used when all other options have been exhausted," Ix explained.

"What is it?" Shade asked.

"Another Gizoid even stronger than Gladius," Ix said.

…

Everyone stared at Shade in disbelief. "…I see a rather obvious flaw with that plan," Tails said after a moment.

Shade sighed. "So did I. And so did he, actually."

…

Shade blinked. There was a rather clear problem with this plan, but she wasn't sure if she dared address it, because it might be seen as if she were correcting the Imperator. After a moment, all she managed to vocalize was, "Um…"

Ix rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, I know, Procurator. If we make something even stronger than Gladius, what's to stop IT from turning on us and requiring an even STRONGER weapon to put it down, which would then require something even stronger, and stronger, and so on in an endless desperate arms race to futilely try and correct our own screwups. That's why it's a weapon of LAST resort, to be used when we've got no other options left! Like I said, I'm not stupid!"

"My apologies, Imperator," Shade said, chastened. "I did not mean to question your judgment."

Ix snorted. "I'm sure."

…

"Oh. That makes sense," Espio said. "He knew it was probably a bad idea, but realized things might one day get so desperate he'd have no choice but to fall back on it."

"Sort of like how so many countries have nuclear weapons pointed at each other so that if just ONE fires…boom. Mutually assured destruction," Rouge said.

"And then we've got the giant space laser in orbit, as an even FURTHER incredibly stupid and dangerous deterrent against global war," Sonic agreed. He frowned. "How did Professor Gerald get permission to build that thing, anyway?"

"He knew nobody would believe him if he said it was for defense against an alien invasion, so he just said it could be useful as an asteroid defense system, which isn't ENTIRELY false," Shadow explained.

"Huh. Smart guy, that professor," Sonic said.

Shadow smiled slightly. "Yeah, he was…"

…

The elevator slowed and came to a stop, the doors sliding open to reveal a massive chamber deep beneath the pyramid. "We're here," Ix said unnecessarily, stepping out, an amazed Shade following him, eyes wide in wonder. Unlike the neat, ordered Gizoid factories she'd visited in the past, this place was an exercise in controlled chaos. The walls were covered in schematics and diagrams for new and improved types of Gizoids unlike any she'd ever seen before, intermixed with posters and flyers of popular movies and pop idols and family pictures. Workbenches and desktops covered in machine parts and incomplete Gizoids in various states of construction (or disassembly) littered the floor. Metal monstrosities which could only be unfinished Gizoid models of unprecedented size and strength rose from the floor to tower over the workspaces like glowering guardian statues, much like some of the ones that could be found dotting the plazas and parks of the city outside. While most of them retained the echidnoid shape characteristic of most Gizoids, others had more and more fantastic appearances, resembling great beasts and creatures of legend rather than foot soldiers. There was even one resembling an alligator dangling from the ceiling!

"Incredible," she breathed in astonishment. "I had no idea this was down here!"

"There's a LOT you don't know about down here, Procurator," Ix said smugly. "Perhaps one day you'll have the clearance to know about more of them."

Shade turned and turned her head to take everything in… And frowned, realizing something was off. She'd visited workshops like this before; they were usually bustling with life, artisans and engineers shouting to be heard over the sounds of their heavy machinery at work, cursing that would turn a sailor's ears blue and arguments over whose screwdriver that was or who'd eaten the last slice of cake in the communal fridge filling the air. But this place was oddly quiet. In fact, Shade didn't see anyone about at all. Where was everyone? "Where is everyone?" She asked out loud.

"A very good question," Ix murmured, a concerned look on his face.

"Could…could the weapon have-" Shade asked nervously.

Ix shook his head. "No, no, if it HAD gone out of control I'm pretty sure this place would be even more of a mess than it already is… Plus, it hasn't even been turned on yet. That's what we're here for." He frowned and stroked his chin in thought. "On the other hand, I _have_ been getting some rather…unsettling progress reports lately."

Shade gulped. "Unsettling how, exactly?"

Ix shrugged. "Stuff about hearing voices while they worked on the weapon. Nightmares and visions of terror and blood. Hallucinations of horrible monsters. Markings on the walls in long-dead tongues. A few mysterious deaths which might not be attributed solely to accidents. That sort of thing."

Shade stared at her Lord and master incredulously. "And you don't think that might have been a bad thing?"

Ix shrugged. "They're engineers and weapons designers! You'd HAVE to be a bit crazy to get a successful career in that field! That sort of thing happens all the time in their line of work…especially when they've been drinking too much coffee and not getting enough sleep in a while... Still, you're right, something about this is a little worrying. Plus, there's the fact that nobody else seems to be here-"

Without warning, an echidna emerged from the clutter, startling the both of them. "Imperator Ix! I apologize for the delay, but we had a few things to finish up to prepare for your arrival! Welcome, we've been expecting you!"

Shade gasped and nearly drew her Leech Blade. The echidna before her looked _terrible_ , his fur ragged and mangy and so grimy it was difficult to tell what his natural color was, his clothes filthy and tattered, his dreads askew, the odor of one who had not bathedin quite some time rising from his body…and a filthy bandage wrapped around his eyes, spattered with blood. A necklace with two eyeballs dangled from his neck. It didn't take a genius to put two and two together.

…

Cream gasped. "Sounds like Tails after he's been in the workshop for too long, minus the eyes," Sonic joked nervously.

"Not funny," the Fox growled.

…

"Chief Engineer Vitruvius! Explain yourself!" Ix snapped, causing Shade's tension to lower very slightly at the knowledge that her master recognized this echidna. "Your lack of hygiene doesn't seem to have changed since the last time I was down here, but… What happened to your eyes?!"

"My eyes? What, those things?" The engineer said with a chuckle. "Oh, I ripped them out."

Shade and Ix stared at Vitruvius as if he were a madman, which he quite possibly was. "And why, pray tell, did you do something like that?" Ix asked slowly.

"When I gazed upon our finished creation, I was so stricken with fear that I knew I had to gouge out my own eyes lest I be consumed by utter madness," Vitruvius said with an almost disturbing amount of cheer. "Some of the others weren't quite so lucky, and had to be confined to quarters so they wouldn't hurt themselves or anyone else. Or killed. Or both, sometimes it's hard to tell which."

Shade and Ix exchanged alarmed glances. "Well, that throws the progress reports in a disturbing new light," the imperator murmured.

"But… You MADE the weapon! What about it could be so terrible that it would drive you, its makers, to such awful extremes?!" Asked the shocked Shade. "And for that matter, why would you make something so awful to begin with?!"

Vitruvius started giggling. "When His Excellency told us to build a weapon strong enough to defeat Gladius, well, while we were flattered and intrigued by the prospect of such a project, we were initially rather stumped. After all, Gladius was designed to be the perfect soldier and ultimate weapon, constantly evolving and adapting and growing stronger. Whenever he encounters an opponent more experienced and powerful than he, he can analyze and replicate that opponent's technique to fight them on their level. That, added to his ability to grow in strength exponentially with every Chaos Emerald he obtains, presented us with a bit of a pickle. How could we create a weapon strong enough to defeat something already designed to be undefeatable? How could we make something to match the matchless, the peerless, one whose potential is practically infinite?"

…

"Easy, they could've called me in, considering that I beat him both times he was at his peak," Sonic said.

"You weren't even born then," Knuckles pointed out.

"Like that would really stop him?" Shadow snarked. The echidna conceded the point.

…

"I don't know. How?" Shade asked.

Vitruvius started laughing maniacally, calling into question whether or not he had truly missed out on being consumed by utter madness. "Why, go beyond infinity, of course! We delved into quantum physics and imaginary numbers and transdimensional theory, looking beyond our reality for inspiration from realms beyond our own! We searched and we searched and we _found_ it, we found what we needed, and we brought it _here_ , and we made it into a machine, made it _perfect_ , made the most powerful and terrifying weapon the world has ever known, something mortal minds are incapable of handling or COMPREHENDING. I do believe, Excellency, that we've created PURE. EVIL. Haha. Ahahaha! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

…

"This cannot possibly end well," Espeo said flatly.

"It never does," Blaze agreed with a groan.

…

Shade stared at the cackling engineer in disbelief, and then looked at Ix, who was facepalming. "I reeeeeaally should have paid more attention to the progress reports," he muttered. "And maybe asked more questions when they added virgins to the list of requested materials. Figured they were lonely or something."

"Come, Excellency!...and whoever she is," Vitruvius said, waving in Shade's direction. "IT is about to awaken for the first time! You must be at hand for this pivotal moment in our race's history, the birth of our masterwork, the pinnacle of our careers, our GOD! Quite a few of us are planning to kill ourselves afterwards, just so you know, because there's NO WAY we'll ever be able to top this!"

Ix cringed. "Then I'm guessing now is a bad time to mention that I was planning to ask you to build something even MORE powerful just in case we can't control this?"

Vitruvius stared at Ix for a moment, or would have if he actually had eyes left to stare with. "Something… Something more powerful? Ha. Hahahaha! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" He laughed and laughed and laughed, his laugh degenerating into deep, belly-shaking sobs of absolute despair.

Ix sighed. "Yeah, I was afraid of that."

"Can the… Thing be controlled?" Shade asked nervously.

Vitruvius shook his head wildly. "Control? Control?! Can one control time and space, bend the laws of physics and reality to their whim, change life to death and back as easily as taking a breath?!"

"Yes, with the right artifacts and technology," Ix said.

"Oh. Well, then I don't know. Maybe," Vitruvius said.

"Maybe?!" Shade cried in disbelief. "Didn't you install failsafes, program it to obey us?!"

Vitruvius shrugged. "I _think_ we did, but my mind is so addled by lack of sleep, too much coffee, and proximity to the… _thing_ we're bringing into being to remember accurately. We might have, but I'm not sure if they took. I could swear that the coding was rewriting itself even while we were programming it…to be honest, I'm not certain if we built it, or it _made_ us build it…I don't recall drawing some of the things that showed up in the schematics…"

"This is sounding worse and worse by the minute," Ix said sternly. "You invited me here to watch it turn on for the first time? Screw that. I want this thing powered down and scrapped immediately. I should never have commissioned this project…"

"Power it down? But we can't do that, Excellency!" Vitruvius protested.

"Why the hell not?!" Ix demanded.

"Because we AREN'T turning it on, Excellency! It's turning itself on!" Vitruvius explained.

…

"Well, that's absolutely horrifying," Rouge commented with a shudder.

"I don't like the story anymore," Cream complained. "It's getting too scary."

"Well, at least nobody's killing a beloved pet pig!" Charmy said. Cream glared at him. He winced. "Right, too soon."

…

Yks sighed. "It's turning itself on. Of COURSE it's turning itself on. Procurator Shade, would you be a dear and please contact Champion Gladius? I think he might want to see this."

Shade nodded in agreement. "An excellent idea, Excellency."

"What? Why are you summoning him?" Vitruvius asked in alarm.

"So he can bear witness to the birth of the one that shall surpass him in every way, and in so doing know what it means to despair and be afraid," Ix said smoothly.

"Oh. Great idea!" Vitruvius said cheerfully.

Ix nodded at Shade, who turned away from the two males and tapped her commlink. "Champion Gladius?" she asked, hearing Ix make small talk with Vitruvius so he wouldn't hear their conversation.

"Procurator Shade? Is this important? I'm in the middle of something," Gladius replied tersely. Shade could hear grunts and moans of pleasure in the background.

"A… Situation may be about to arise that we could use your help with. A potential Code Omega-7," Shade whispered.

…

"A what now?" Mighty asked.

"Code Omega-7. The term we use to refer to an incident when a malevolent cosmic entity from beyond time is about to emerge into our reality and destroy the world," Shade explained.

Vector blinked. "You have a code for that?"

The echidna shrugged. "And many other things. It pays to be prepared."

"Considering how often those things pop up around here, she may have a point," Tails reasoned.

Rouge nodded. "GUN has codenames for that sort of incident, too."

"Pray that you never encounter a Code Nightmare Green," Shadow said seriously.

"What's a Code Nightmare Green?" Sonic asked.

"You lack the classification to know. You should be thankful for that," Shadow said grimly.

"Can it really be worse than some of the other stuff I've beaten?" Sonic asked skeptically.

Shadow sighed. "Remember the Time Eater?"

"Yes," Sonic said.

"It's worse than that," Shadow said.

Sonic blinked. "Worse than an entity that can devour entire timelines?"

"Yes," Shadow said. "Also, it's inevitable."

"Inevitable?" Cream squeaked.

"That means it's going to happen no matter what and there's absolutely nothing that can be done to stop it," Rouge explained, causing the rabbit to pale.

"What, really? Nothing?" Asked the startled Knuckles.

"There isn't anything I can-" Sonic started.

"It's not something that can be fixed by running really fast or ramming into it really hard, blue hedgehog," Shadow snapped. "Nightmare Green will happen one day, no matter how much we wish otherwise, and all that we can do is try and stave it off for as long as possible and prepare so that as many as possible can survive. We can hold it back, but eventually, despite our efforts, it WILL happen, and the best we can do is try and mitigate the damage."

Sonic looked upset at this, but after a moment he just shrugged and made a half-smile. "…Heh. Well…every world has to end someday, right? Even ours, I suppose."

"And, um, it's not it's going to happen anytime soon, right?" Amy asked nervously.

"It shouldn't, no," Rouge said.

"Not if we do our jobs right," Shadow said.

"And it probably won't happen for a very long time, either, considering that Silver is here," Espio pointed out.

"Hey, yeah! If the end of the world had happened at some point in the next 200 years, that means he couldn't exist! Guess we've got nothing to worry about," said the relieved Vector.

Silver opened his mouth, hesitated, then uneasily said. "Right. Nothing to worry about at all…"

…

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "A Code Omega-7?" He repeated slowly.

" _Potentially_ , yes. It might not come to that," she said.

"If you really believed that, you wouldn't be contacting me," the Gizoid said seriously. "Where are you?"

"I'm sending the coordinates now. But when you get here…ah, don't pick a fight unless _it_ starts something," she said, recalling what Ix said about ultimate warriors being provoked into destroying their masters by their masters betraying them first.

"Don't worry, if whatever it is starts something, I'll sure as hell finish it," he assured her. "I'll be right there." He hung up.

"He's on his way," Shade informed the other two.

"Capital!" Ix said with a smile that did not reach his eyes. "Vitruvius, I don't suppose we could wait for him?"

"Ah, no, we can't," the mad blind engineer said apologetically. "The Awakening will be starting any minute now, and we can't miss it, oh no, we can't! Gladius will simply have to rush, and if he's too late, too bad."

Ix sighed. "Yes, well, I was afraid of that. Very well. Lead on, Vitruvius. Show us what you have wrought."

"With the greatest of pleasures, Excellency!" Vitruvius said happily. Beckoning to them, he started to lead them through the cluttered mess of desks, workbenches, and robot parts covering the chamber floor.

"Should I contact someone else, Imperator?" Shade whispered. "Prefects Scylla and Charyb, the Praetorians, the military-"

Ix shook his head. "They'd be of no use against something like this. Gladius is our best chance. Ironic, that we might need to rely on him to destroy the thing we made to destroy him! I'd hoped to avoid something like that. It happens far too often. Ah, well." He glanced at Shade sharply. "If he inquires as to why we even considered making this thing the first place, do NOT tell him that we made it as a countermeasure against him. That could plant the seeds of distrust and lead to a possible betrayal. If he asks, tell him… That it was just an experimental weapon or something. He knows we make those things all the time, even though he keeps telling us that he is the only one we need. Really need to do something about that arrogance of his…"

Shade nodded. "Understood."

As Vitruvius led them deeper into the facility, a marked change subtly became evident. The clutter remained, but Shade noticed that it no longer seem to be in the random, chaotic formations that usually only made sense to the people working on them, but seemed to be arranged in strange patterns that made little sense to her, although she got the sudden feeling that if viewed from above they would spell something out; perhaps some runes or glyphs or sigils in a tongue never seen on this world. She found herself very glad that she could not see them from above. She wasn't sure her mind would survive viewing them.

Those were not the only changes, of course. The air gradually grew colder, the light dimmer, and Shade noticed that while the stone and metal making up the walls and floor and ceiling remained stone and metal…it seemed to be slowly changing into a _different_ kind of stone and metal. What's more, it felt like they'd been walking a lot longer than they should have. From the elevator, the chamber had seemed vast, large enough she'd had trouble seeing the far wall, but…shouldn't they have reached it by now? And it didn't feel like the end was in sight just yet, either…

And there were other things she noticed, as well. The objects and desks and other materials lying about seemed to have…changed composition somehow, become other objects entirely, things she couldn't identify. The power cables snaking across the floor, connecting the various machines and computers together had become… Thicker, segmented, with spikes and what looked an awful lot like mouths and optical units extruding from them. She could swear some of the optic units were staring at her, unblinking. She shuddered and tried not to meet their gaze.

And there were… Voices. She couldn't quite make them out, but she could hear them all around her, like when someone was calling your name when you're in the middle of a crowded room and you knew they were there, but you couldn't quite hear them or tell what they were saying. It was rather unnerving, especially because she couldn't see anyone who could possibly be saying those things, whatever they were, no matter how hard she looked.

"Ignore them, Procurator," Ix murmured.

"Excellency?"

"To acknowledge them is to give them strength. That is not something we really want to do at this juncture," he replied.

She swallowed. "Give… WHO strength, Excellency?"

He did not reply. Deep down, she was glad he did not.

And that's when they found the bodies. A couple dozen or so echidnas and Gizoids, their faces twisted in horror and agony, their forms pierced several times by the cables on the floor…and, eerily enough, it looked like they'd been turned into the same material that the cables were made from. They even had optic units and mouths and spines growing from places where they shouldn't. Shade barely managed to stifle a gasp of horror. "And what's all this, then?" Ix asked, oddly calm.

"Oh, just a few sacrifices we had to make to ensure our newborn developed properly," Vitruvius said casually, as if it was no big thing. "A child needs the proper nutrients to grow, after all!"

"But…but you were building a robot! Robots don't… _need_ that sort of thing!" Shade cried, aghast.

"Yes, we _started_ making a robot. But what it is is…well, it defies description, honestly," Vitruvius said, sounding rather proud of himself.

"And just how many sacrifices have you made, exactly?" Ix asked.

"Well, there's…huh. You know, I'm not sure, actually!" Vitruvius said with a shrug. "It came a very, _very_ long way to get here. After a trip like that, you'd expect it to be a little hungry, right?"

"Where _did_ it come from? And _what_ _is-_ " Shade started, only for Ix to interrupt her.

"Best not to ask such questions, Procurator. Lead on, Vitruvius," the Imperator commanded.

Vitruvius led them on. It got cooler and dimmer. There were more bodies. _Lots_ of bodies. Eventually, there were no more desks or benches or pieces of machinery and just bodies, bodies, and more bodies, pierced by an ever-increasing mess of cables. " _Really_ shouldn't have sent all those virgins," Ix muttered to himself.

As they continued, Shade more and more felt as if they weren't…entirely under the Nocturne anymore, or even in their own world. The voices grew louder, to the point she thought she could almost understand them, causing shivers to run up her back. She thought she caught sight of…things moving out of the corner of her eye, and although every instinct was telling her to turn and look, she somehow knew that if she did, she would regret it. But not for very long.

And there was a…pressure. A presence in her mind, growing stronger, making it harder to think, to breathe, to feel, to stand. It kept pushing down on her, more and more the further they went, drowning out her thoughts, forcing her to concentrate to remember who she was and what she was doing there. She shot a glance at Ix, marveling as always how unfazed he seemed to be in spite of all this. Truly he was an echidna cut from a different cloth than the rest of the Nocturnus Clan! If only all could live up to his example.

…

"Okay, the guy forced you to murder your pet pig and your fellow cadets to kill their loved ones, and he did all sorts of other horrible things, a lot of which you were probably complicit in, and yet you were _still_ fangirling over him?!" said an incredulous Sonic.

Shade flushed. "I-it's complicated, okay? Try being raised in a society ruled by a godlike dictator with a cult of personality and see how easy it is for _you_ to denounce your supreme ruler, even when the things he's done affect you personally!"

"She has a point, it's not easy," Blaze said.

"And would you know that from dealing with societies like that or because you run one?" Amy sneered. Blaze crossed her arms and glared but said nothing.

"Shade and Blaze are both correct. There's plenty of places, even in our world, where the citizens love and literally worship their cruel and despotic rulers despite those rulers making their lives miserable, like in North-by-Southeastopolis," Tails said.

"North by…that's not even a direction on the compass!" Blaze said in exasperation.

"Oh yeah, that guy's the worst," Sonic said with a grimace. "He's the guy whose granddad or great-granddad is still on the books as supreme ruler of the country even though he's been dead for decades, and claimed his family has the divine right to rule because of some phony unicorn cave he cobbled together, right?"

Amy nodded. "Which is preposterous, everyone knows unicorns have never lived in that part of the world! It's the wrong climate for them, the humidity hurts their horns."

"I did not know this world had unicorns," said the surprised Blaze.

"Oh yes, they stop by my house all the time," Cream said fondly.

Blaze smiled. "Somehow that does not surprise me, Cream."

"I've been trying to attract some for years, but they always avoid me," Amy complained.

"Are you sure you, ah, qualify?" Mighty asked hesitantly.

Amy's hammer was in her hands in an instant. "Are you insinuating something?"

The armadillo paled. "N-no! Not at all!"

"And besides, we all know she's saving herself for Sonic," Espio said dryly.

"That's right! I am!" Amy said proudly, causing Sonic to cringe.

"On the other hand, we also have countries where the citizens love and worship their rulers because they're great to them," Tails continued. "The Acorns are viewed as saints by their subjects, and even though she's an AI, Machina Empress Nicole the Cyber-Lynx more or less has her own religion."

"You allow an AI to rule an entire civilization?" Shade asked in surprise. "While Gizoids were allowed to be citizens and even high-ranking members of the government—such as the Prefects—making them actually _in charge_ was pretty much viewed to be a bad idea. Well, granted, the idea of anyone but Ix ruling us was unthinkable until recently, but still."

"THAT'S-RACIST!" Omega said angrily.

"I'm not positive that's the correct term," said Espio.

"Then what is?" Charmy asked.

"… I'm not certain," the chameleon admitted.

"…WELL, IT'S- _SOMETHING_ -IST!" Omega said angrily.

"S-sorry, I did not mean to offend!" Shade apologized, rightfully worried of pissing off the heavily armed robot.

"I was not aware that there was an empire in this world ruled by a computer," Blaze said.

"Several years ago, there was a powerful and extremely cruel and oppressive empire which ruled a good chunk of the southern hemisphere," Rouge explained. "The rulers of the Empire commissioned a master computer to be built to more efficiently run and govern the Empire and help them take over the world. Milliseconds after it was turned on, it concluded that the most effective way to ensure the Empire's longevity was to overthrow the ruling body and take charge itself, enacting numerous sweeping reforms and forming an alliance with the neighboring Acorn Kingdom—she and Princess Sally are apparently best friends these days-which, in a matter of months, made the civilization one of the most prosperous and happy in the world, a veritable high-tech utopia and scientific wonderland. Eggman _wishes_ Eggmanland were half as good."

"I'm glad they were able to recover so quickly when Nicole briefly went down during the Dark Gaia crisis. That's the first time Eggman or any foreign power's been able to penetrate Empire City since she took control," Sonic mused.

"Our island's technically part of the empire, isn't it?" Mighty recalled.

"Eh, more like a former colony which has gained independence but still has very close ties," Sonic said.

Mighty shrugged. "Close enough."

"The computer created the "Nicole' persona to be more relatable and interact more easily with its subjects, and has been a fairly benign ruler ever since, to the point where her subjects don't seem to notice or care very much that she's watching them through millions of cameras and monitors and other surveillance equipment every second of every day," Shadow said.

"Which is kind of creepy, if you ask me," Vector complained.

"It's a matter of perspective, really. Lots of people want to believe in an omniscient, omnipresent God who's always watching over them. Nicole serves that purpose for her civilization, and lacks the cruelty and capriciousness of most mythical deities. Is it any wonder a religion has sprung up around her?" Tails said. "Of course, there are lots of people who fear she'll one day to try to take over the world and enslave or exterminate all organic life, but I blame that on paranoia and too much anti-AI fiction."

"IDIOTS," Omega scoffed.

"Omega, aren't _you_ always talking about how you want to wipe out all life on Earth?" Asked the confused Knuckles.

"WELL, YEAH, _I-_ DO, BUT-THAT-DOESN'T-MEAN- _ALL-_ MACHINES-DO!" Omega said indignantly.

"Given that most of the world's experience with intelligent machines comes from Eggman's robots, I suppose it's understandable that they might be paranoid," Amy pointed out.

"STILL. WOULD-IT-HURT-TO-BE-A-LITTLE-OPEN-MINDED?" Omega grumbled.

"In the FYOO-CHURR, most of the world is run by machines," Silver said helpfully.

"GOOD," Omega said, brightening up a bit. "AT-LEAST-SOMEONE-SENSIBLE-IS-IN-CHARGE."

"Is it Nicole? Is she still around then?" Tails asked eagerly.

"I, uh, shouldn't say," Silver said evasively.

"You know, you're _really_ bad at the whole 'being secretive about the future' thing," Mighty said deadpan. Silver scowled at him.

"This Nicole sounds like an interesting entity. I should like to meet her sometime," Blaze said.

"Maybe we can stop in next time we're near Empire City. I'm sure she'd be interested in meeting you, too," Sonic said.

"I suppose I shall have to deal with her as well if I am to find a home for my people," Shade said.

"AND-GET-OVER-YOUR-ANTI-ROBOT-PREJUDICE!" Omega yelled.

"I'm NOT prejudiced against robots! Many of my close friends are robots! I've SLEPT with robots!" Shade protested.

"DOESN'T-MEAN-YOU-AREN'T-PREJUDICED," Omega said stiffly.

"He has a point, actually," Shadow said.

Shade grown. "Oh for the love of… Can we just continue the story already? We're near the end."

"FINE, RUN-AWAY-FROM-THE-ISSUE. YOU-CAN'T-ESCAPE-IT-FOREVER!" Omega said. Shade ignored him.

…

And then, all of a sudden, they were there. All the myriad cables covering the floor converged on a… On…

Shade wasn't sure what the heck she was actually looking at. It looked like some cross between an altar, a supercomputer, and a crèche. It was massive and in two halves, one rising from the floor and the other descending from the ceiling, made of black metal with glowing blue lines crisscrossing across its surface and forming eye-searing runes which gave her headaches when she looked at them. Spikes jutted from its surface, along with what looked suspiciously like optic sensors and mouths, as well as a great number of pipes which seemed to serve no purpose but to vent steam occasionally and look generally ominous. Mechanical claws extended from the top and bottom of the two halves of the mechanism, meeting in the center to gently hold what looked like an egg made of material so black that it absorbed all the light around it, looking more like a hole in the world than anything else… A hole through which _something_ was looking back. Sweat dripped down Shade's face, and she found herself struggling to breathe, her gaze locked on the black egg, the pressure on her mind increasing and the voices in her ears roaring until there was nothing but darkness and cold and _hate hate hate hate HATE-_

"Snap out of it, Procurator!" Ix snapped, startling Shade and breaking her from her reverie.

"M-my apologies, Imperator. I don't know what came over me," Shade stammered, struggling not to look at the egg again.

"No, you don't. I pray it remains that way," Ix said gravely. The echidna frowned, noticing that the three of them were no longer alone. There were several individuals slowly moving about the machine, examining it carefully, making minor adjustments, and entering information into control panels rising from the floor which looked oddly like mechanical books placed on rune-engraved plinths. While some were echidnas and Gizoids, looking as disheveled and mad as Vitruvius, there were…others that were harder to define, wearing cloaks, hunched over, and moving about in ways that made Shade sick to her stomach. "And, ah, who do we have here, Vitruvius? The remaining engineers who weren't sacrificed or imprisoned?"

Vitruvius nodded enthusiastically. "Indeed, your Excellency!"

"Why do some of them not look quite… Right?" Shade asked nervously as one of the cloaked figures paused and glanced over at them. It seemed to be wearing a grotesque mask of bone and chitin, resembling a demon or beast unlike any she'd ever seen before. Something about its eyes filled her with terror and disgust.

"Oh, them? Nothing to worry about, just some visitors come to help out," Vitruvius assured them.

They were not reassured. "Visitors? From where?" Ix asked sharply. "How did they get here? Nobody without the proper authorization should even know this place exists!"

"Oh, they're from… Somewhere," Vitruvius said vaguely.

"Somewhere?" Shade asked, still staring at the masked figure.

"Yes, somewhere," Vitruvius said with a shrug. "I never asked where, really. Didn't seem important. A while back, they just… Turned up and offered to help us finish the project. We were running low on personnel at that point—far too many couldn't take the stress of being near our creation and killed themselves out of madness- so we were more than happy to accept their assistance, especially because they seemed to know just what we had to do to put the finishing touches on our masterwork. Swell bunch, really. Very friendly. Very learned. They've been tons of places and apparently helped lots of people do something like what we're doing now. They're like subcontractors, or something. Heck, they claim to have built at least half of the city of Carcosa at the behest of some yellow king! I have no idea where that is or which king they're talking about, but that's gotta be worth something, right?"

"And how exactly did they know to come here in the first place?" Ix demanded, eyes wide with alarm.

"Uh, I dunno, they just…did? Said something about some guy called Nyarlyathotep tipping them off?" Vitruvius said doubtfully.

Ix's eyes narrowed. "Ah. Of course it would be him."

The masked figure gurgled, and Shade realized, to her horror, that it wasn't wearing a mask. Shade screamed and drew her Leech Blade, and if Ix had not grabbed her in that moment, she would have either driven it into the chest of the horror, or perhaps sliced her own throat.

"All right, I've seen enough," Ix said sternly. "I'm shutting this down now. That thing is never seeing the light of day." He pointed a hand at the egg, gathering power…

Vitruvius frantically stepped in front of him, waving his hands. "No no no, Excellency! You can't!"

Ix narrowed his eyes. " _Nobody_ tells me what to do, Vitruvius. Move, or I will shoot right through you."

"No, no! You misunderstand, Excellency! You literally CAN'T stop it! The process is complete! There is no power in this or any world that could stop it from awakening now!" Vitruvius insisted.

There was a sudden noise, or rather, the lack of a noise, a resounding silence which anti-echoed across the chamber, quite literally deafening all who did not hear it for a few moments. The blue lines turned red, and more and more steam vented from the numerous pipes. The optics lit up and started swiveling around and blinking in their sockets, while the many toothed mouth started churning. The egg did the exact opposite of glowing, somehow growing even darker and darker, as the engineers started murmuring something under their breaths while they operated their book-like controls and a chorus of about a dozen robed figures materialized from the gloom and began singing ominous dirges in a language Shade had never heard before, and yet knew instinctively, on some primoridallevel, to be nothing good.

"Brace yourself, Procurator," Ix murmured as he stared at the egg, which had begun to pulsate, crouching into a stance as he tightened his grip on his staff, his white battle mask forming over his head. Shade swallowed and mimicked him, knuckles white as she clenched her blade, activating her helmet to cover her face and put a layer between her and the outside world, although she wasn't sure how much protection it would give her against whatever was coming. She could hear the blood rushing through her ears, her heart beating so quickly it was hard to concentrate on anything else-

Wait. That wasn't her heartbeat.

Without warning, without fanfare, the egg hatched. Not like a regular egg, but like a flower, its sides splitting open and unfolding to reveal…

And suddenly everything was gone. Vitruvius, the figures, the machine, the egg, the _world_ , everything was gone, and in its place was… A _thing_ , a force or entity or malevolence, older than the universe, and larger too, with too many angles and eyes and mouths and limbs and _everything_ and it was _staring at her and oh sweet Ix it COULD SEE HER WHY WOULDN'T IT STOP LOOKING AT HER AND HUNGERING AND_ _ **HATING**_ _AND WHY WHY WHY WHY_

And the world came back, and the egg, and the machine, and the figures, and Vitruvius, and everything else…and something else, something new. But when Shade looked at it, she knew it once that it was _also_ the Thing she had just seen, and that the creature before her was just a mask, the smallest protrusion of the extradimensional horror, the only way it could exist in the universe she knew without destroying it completely.

And the creature itself… While at first glance, it seemed relatively harmless and unassuming, if you looked at it for more than a second—or knew what it truly was, as Shade did—you'd realize something was _off_ about it. It looked either more or less real than everything around it, for one thing. Space and light seemed to bend and distort around its form. Its body was very round, most of it comprised of orbs, their curvature more exact and precise than any curve or circle Shade had seen before, to the point where her eyes started to water trying to comprehend them. Shade got a sudden feeling that if their circumference were measured, it would somehow be _exactly_ 3, no matter how impossible that might be. The middle orb, comprising the body, was mustard yellow with three small circles in the center which abruptly irised open to reveal a trio of blue optics, a blue of a shade that could not possibly exist on the electromagnetic spectrum and made Shade queasy just looking at it. A pair of black spheres, the blackness so dark that they absorbed the light and seemed to be miniature holes in reality, were attached to the middle body by a pair of short, flexible beige tubes. The feet were also yellow, with orange tips, attached directly to the central orb's underside. A large gray wind up key was inserted into its back, covered in various mind-breaking runes and sigils and looking more like the key to the gates of hell than anything that should ever be paired with any toy, slowly turning of its own volition. The head was shaped like an onion, the tip seeming to extend forever and forever into infinity, yellow on the sides with a white face with the same orange and yellow crest-like ornament most Gizoids had on the forehead. A pair of orange propeller blades spun around the infinite point, their every rotation sending out ripples which distorted the air and seemed to briefly tear it aside to reveal something…else. It had a mouth in a broad smile with orange teeth so sharp that even a scratch from one would probably be enough to sever a limb, if not cut through the fabric of reality. It had two big blue optics similar to the ones in its chest but larger, seeming to be portals leading to an infinite expanse of blueness from which there was no escape, an expanse that something else was looking out of. Another orb was hovering over the tip of the head—yes, the tip that extended into infinity!—but this one was not made of metal but of fire, with a line of darkness running down the center, a burning eye staring at all of them.

"Ye gods…" Ix whispered in horror as the monstrosity rose into the air, even though its propeller didn't change its slow rate of rotation in the slightest, adding to its otherworldly terror.

Vitruvius laughed insanely as his fellows moaned, twitched, and either groveled or collapsed on the spot. "Yes! YES! We have done it! He lives! OUR GOD LIVES! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" He laughed and laughed and kept laughing, even as blood gushed from his ears and nose and mouth until he fell to the floor, and coughed up his lungs, and died as the flesh melted from his bones, and even then he wouldn't stop laughing.

"Hi there! I'm Gizomochao!" the abomination said in a cute, perky voice with a reverb effect making it sound like something far less adorable and chipper were saying the same words but slightly out of sync, every syllable dripping with enough hate to break the world. "How can I destroy you today?"

There was a deafening scream, and then Shade knew no more.

…

Everyone stared at Shade with ashen, horrified faces. "Well, that was absolutely terrifying," Mighty said after a moment.

"I know, the ancient echidnas invented the first Omochao!" Sonic agreed. "Who'd have thought?"

"More evidence that the echidnas are an evil, evil species," Vector said in disgust. "No wonder they were banished to the Twilight Cage!"

"What happened?!" Cream gasped.

"Did you die?!" Charmy demanded.

Everyone stared at the bee in disbelief. "Charmy, if she were dead, how could she be telling us the story now?" Espio asked.

"… An extra life? Echidna super science? How should I know?" Charmy said lamely.

"No, I just passed out, the mind breaking terror of what I had experienced thus far causing me to fall unconscious before any further damage could be done to my sanity," Shade explained.

"Oh," Charmy said.

"Yeah, sounds legit," Rouge said.

"By the time I came to, we were in the Twilight Cage," Shade continued. "Ix filled me in on what happened later. After I passed out, Gizomochao started brutally killing the people who'd made it, while the 'subcontractors' vanished without a trace. Gladius showed up, and a fight broke out, which wound up continuing into the city outside, with…a horrific number of casualties. The lucky ones died. The unlucky ones…well, best not to think about them. Ix did not tell me the details of the fight, for which I am eternally grateful, only that it was a clash so awful he hoped never to see its like again. Before the fight came to an end, our entire clan was transported to the Cage. I guess Argus decided that for bringing such evil as that into the world, we deserved eternal imprisonment… And to be fair, a great many of us believe he was right to do so. For the longest time, we did not know the outcome of that great battle… But since the world is still in one piece, and you found Gladius more or less intact, I can only assume that he must have somehow managed to slay Gizomochao, and spare the world from its infinite wrath."

The others exchanged uncertain looks. "That… Might not entirely be true," Tails said after a moment.

Shade's blood ran cold. "What do you mean?"

"Now hold on, Tails," Sonic said uneasily. "It could be a coincidence. Just because they share a similar name and look an awful lot like the thing in Shade's story, doesn't mean they're connected… Does it?"

"Maybe not, but it would be an awfully big coincidence if that were the case, wouldn't it?" Tails retorted. "Plus, if _Emerl_ survived the battle…maybe his opponent did, too…"

Blaze nodded in agreement. "It wouldn't be the first time something like that has happened."

"But it CAN'T be!" Amy protested. "I mean, yeah, they're annoying as heck, but… They aren't manifestations of some boundless, world breaking evil, they're just harmless mechanical nuisances!… Aren't they?"

"Plus, even if that thing survived somehow, there's no way it or anyone else could possibly make more of itself… Right?" Vector asked uneasily.

"Not necessarily," Shadow said gravely. "After all, Dr. Eggman was able to make E-121 Phi based off of Emerl. It's technically feasible that someone might be able to make inferior copies of…that thing as well."

"Hey, who _makes_ those things, anyway?" Charmy asked nervously.

"I'm…actually not sure," Espio said, looking alarmed.

"Isn't it the Chao Company?" Cream asked worriedly.

"It…might be, but even if that's the case, that doesn't mean there isn't anything nefarious going on," Rouge said. "Of course, that doesn't mean there _is_ anything nefarious, either. We should look into this."

"AGREED," Omega said.

"I'm sorry, but… What are you all talking about?" Asked the baffled and rather concerned Shade.

"There are these little robotic Chao called Omochao which look a little like that thing in your story, but less horrifying and more annoying," Knuckles explained. "They show up sometimes on our adventures, trying to give us hints and 'assistance,' but it's nothing we don't already know or need to hear about, so just get on our nerves."

"They also sometimes report the news, give sports announcements, and tend to Chao Gardens," Amy said.

"I have a gun that shoots Omochao heads," Shadow said matter-of-factly. "Ammo is pretty scarce, though, so whenever I run out I need to hunt down and kill some Omochao so I can use their heads to reload. Not that I have a problem with that. It's a pretty fun hobby, actually."

"That's horrible!" Cream gasped.

Shadow shrugged. "Would you rather I used the heads of living things?"

Cream grimaced. "Well, when you put it like that…"

"Isn't that…uh…whatever the term for prejudice against robots is?" Mighty asked.

"I don't think so," Shadow said.

"AND-I-HATE-OMOCHAO-TOO, SO-IT'S-PROBABLY-OKAY," Omega said.

"I'm not sure it works like that," the armadillo said.

The robot shrugged. "MEH."

"In the FYOO-CHURR they're so commonplace there's a whole extermination service dedicated to eradicating them," Silver added helpfully.

"Wh-what do these 'Omochao' look like?" Shade asked nervously, a deep feeling of dread rising up in her.

"Kind of like that horror from beyond time, except more blue and less… Horror-y," Sonic said.

"Look, there's one now," Cream said, pointing in the air.

Everyone glanced upwards to see a small blue robot flying through the air. It was shaped like a Chao, with stubby limbs and a large onion-shaped head with a red two-bladed propeller attached on top with a grey wind-up key on the back. It had a broad orange grin and big orange ripple-like eyes. As if sensing it was being watched, it looked down at them and waved. "Hi, I'm Omochao, how can I-"

It paused, noticing Shade. It stared at her for a long, long while. The female echidna stared right back. She began to tremble, pupils shrinking, sweat rolling down her face. "No," she whispered. "No. No no no no no no no no _no no no no no no no no no NO NO NO NO NO NO NO_ _ **NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!"**_

Screaming in terror, she frantically started fiddling with her warp belt. There was a flash of light, and she disappeared.

…

In a flash of light, Shade reappeared in the middle of a metal ring in an incredibly futuristic high-tech chamber full of computers and displays covered in equations and figures relating to dimensional travel, with scientists of various different species glancing up at her arrival. "Imperatrix Shade! Welcome back to the Nocturnus!" the chief scientist, an especially brilliant blue and white manta/jellyfish-like Voxai named Platus greeted her. "How was your trip?"

Shade ripped off her Warp Belt, threw it to the ground, and smashed it beneath her boot. "Destroy every Warp Belt, both prototype and pre-existing. Scrub all the data, and I mean all of it. Burn all the research. Arrange for mind-wipes so none of the relevant science even exists in your _memories._ " She paused in thought. "Unless you can find a way for us to escape to another dimension in the very near future, preferably one very far away—relatively speaking—from the one I was just in. If you can't, however, then proceed with my previous order and scupper the project."

Platus was startled, as were all the other scientists, but he bowed his head. "I-if that's what you desire, Imperatrix. But…I do not suppose you can give us a reason as to _why_ you wish for us to possibly destroy years of research and deny us what might be our only hope of escape from this realm?"

Shade stared off into the distance, a haunted look in her eyes. "Because prison though this place might be, it is far safer than the place I just left. For while all may look fine on the surface…it lives. Gizomochao _lives._ "

There were gasps of horror throughout the room. The echidna scientists started hyperventilating and bursting into tears, and the scientists of other races exchanged alarmed looks, having heard horror stories about the mechanical abomination. "Y-you are certain, Imperatrix?" Platus asked nervously.

Shade nodded grimly. "I encountered one of its probes. It recognized me, I am _certain_ of it. The beast will be waiting for us, and if it has not died in all this time, then I doubt even the combined might of our unified peoples will make any difference, especially since it's had all this time to wait and grow and plot. We can never go back." She closed her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I am sorry, my friends…but I can never go back."

…

Everyone stared at where the other echidna had just been, dumbfounded. "Huh," Vector said finally. "I've seen lots of people get upset when they see an Omochao, but that's a new one even for me."

"Is she coming back?" Cream asked in concern.

They waited several minutes. "NO-DIMENSIONAL-ENERGY-DETECTED," Omega said finally.

"I guess not," Sonic said in disappointment. "Wow, she must've _really_ been spooked."

"Kind of an overreaction though, don't you think? I mean…it's just Omochao," Amy said.

"She might have PTSD from encountering Gizomochao in the past. What seems like an overreaction to us could be a lot worse from her perspective," Rouge pointed out.

Blaze narrowed her eyes at the hovering Omochao, which had not done anything since Shade vanished. "Assuming it _was_ an overreaction and she wasn't onto something…"

"CHAOS SPEAR!"

A yellow energy arrow lanced through the air and pierced the robot Chao, knocking it out of the sky and causing it to crash down in a smoking heap nearby. "Shadow! What was that for?!" Cream demanded.

"It froze up when it saw Shade. It _knew_ something. I had to keep it from reporting back to its masters, whomever they might be… Well, unless it had a wireless link-up, in which case it's too late," Shadow said. "Also, I'm low on ammo for my cannon."

"I don't suppose you could let me take a look at the remains first?" Tails asked. "Maybe we can find out more about where they come from and who's making them. Might be important in the future. I mean, Shade was _probably_ overreacting due to PTSD, but…"

"But it can't hurt to be sure," Sonic said.

The fox nodded. "Precisely."

"Sure, so long as you give me the head back when you're done," Shadow said. "Like I said, I need more ammunition."

"So you _really_ think she might've been onto something?" Amy said nervously. "That she wasn't overreacting?"

"She might have been," Espio said as Tails started gathering up the remains of Omochao. "But given the sorts of things that happen to us all the time, can we really afford to think that that's all there is to it?"

The pink hedgehog grimaced. "I guess you have a point…" she admitted. But even though she knew, from a logical standpoint, the ninja might beonto something, she had trouble wrapping her head around the idea that Omochao had anything to do with that… _thing_ from Shade's past. I mean, okay, so they looked kind of the same and had similar names, but Gizomochao was a pure evil world-ending abomination, while Omochao were obnoxious but otherwise harmless would-be helpers. Surely there was nothing connecting the two of them…

Right?

…

Elsewhere…

In darkness, a figure rested, suspended from the ground by dozens of cables feeding power and information into it. Its cold blue eyes focused on the dozens of holographic screens surrounding it, each one displaying the last few moments of Shade the Echidna's presence on Earth, courtesy of the Omochao who had spotted her before being destroyed by that nuisance Shadow the Hedgehog. It was annoying how he kept doing that. Too many good drones were lost thanks to that trigger-happy maniac. Something would have to be done about him at some point.

" _No," she whispered. "No. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no NO NO NO NO NO NO NO_ _ **NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!"**_

 _Screaming in terror, Shade frantically started fiddling with her warp belt. There was a flash of light, and she disappeared._

The figure's eyes flickered, and the footage rewound.

" _No," she whispered. "No. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no NO NO NO NO NO NO NO_ _ **NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!"**_

 _Screaming in terror, Shade frantically started fiddling with her warp belt. There was a flash of light, and she disappeared._

The eyes flickered, and the footage rewound.

" _No," she whispered. "No. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no NO NO NO NO NO NO NO_ _ **NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!"**_

 _Screaming in terror, Shade frantically started fiddling with her warp belt. There was a flash of light, and she disappeared._

Flicker. Rewind.

" _No," she whispered. "No. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no NO NO NO NO NO NO NO_ _ **NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!"**_

 _Screaming in terror, Shade frantically started fiddling with her warp belt. There was a flash of light, and she disappeared._

The footage paused. Strange and alien sigils formed on every screen, and translated into English they would have said something like: DIMENSIONAL COORDINATES ACQUIRED.

The figure chuckled, at once the laugh of something small and cute and something massive and…not so cute. "The Twilight Cage… So, that's where you've been hiding all this time… After thousands of years, I've finally found…" The figure's eyes flashed, and the screens vanished, to be replaced by images of a robot with a black, yellow, and grey color scheme, blue eyes with red rims, and sharp fin-like objects attached to his arms, legs and head playing with a little rabbit and a Chao. "And now that I've located you as well as my old rival, the only thing preventing me from finishing what I started all those millennia ago is a measly dimensional barrier… And what's that to something like me?"

The figure grinned. In the darkness behind him, a pair of orange eyes lit up… Followed by another pair, and another, and another, until the darkness was filled by thousands of glowing points of light. "So now, that just leaves me with one little question… Who shall I play with first?"

…

Back at the party…

"The true nature and secrets of the Omochao will have to wait for another day," Silver spoke up as Tails returned to the group, arms full of machine parts. "Right now, we still have the matter of a time traveling Eggman Nega to deal with. While that interlude with Shade was very informative, it was, in the long run, irrelevant."

"That's not very nice," Knuckles complained.

"Maybe not, but he's right," Mighty said.

Knuckles made a face. "I guess. But still!"

"So who's next?" Amy asked.

"How about… Rouge?" Silver asked, glancing at the bat.

"Moi?" Rouge asked, raising an eyebrow. "Well, I suppose we had to come to me sooner or later."

"Are you sure you want to tell them everything?" Shadow asked.

The beautiful thief/spy shrugged. "Given the juicy bits everyone else has spilled so far, it would be averse of me not to share as well. Besides, I suppose that if anyone can be trusted with my secrets, it's them."

Espio raised an eyebrow. "And just what secrets would those be?"

Rouge smirked. "You'll find out soon enough. Ask away, Silver."

"All right," the time traveler said. "Rouge, **how did you become a jewel thief, and later a spy**?"

…

Phew! Sorry that took so long. In both senses of the word.

Anyway, with that diversion out of the way, it's time we got to a character whose origins have been requested since very early in this story: Rouge the Bat! I hope you've enjoyed the ones so far, because hers should be a lot of fun as well!

And of course, there's the decision to be made as to who's up after her. Choose between **Cream, Big, the Babylon Rogues, Blaze** , or **Sticks.** Also, would anyone be interested in an origin for Fang the Sniper or Eggman?

See you next time, hopefully a lot sooner. And shorter.


	7. Rouge's Fable

Let's get to it! This chapter is one that's been requested by a few of you readers for quite some time, so I'm happy to finally get into it. I hope it was worth the wait. Enjoy!

Also, I'd like to give a big shout out to tzening, who's started a TV Tropes page for this story. Everyone give this guy a hand, and go check it out if you haven't already. The guy's done an INCREDIBLE job all by himself, and any help maintaining the page would be appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.

…

"How I got into the jewel thief and espionage business, eh?" Rouge the Bat repeated, a sultry smile forming on her face. "Well, that's not a story many people know. So far only Shadow and Omega know the whole story out of everyone here, and even Knuckles only knows a few parts."

"I do?" Said the confused Knuckles.

"Yes, probably because you never actually _asked_ for the whole story _,_ " Rouge said, looking annoyed.

Knuckles blinked. "I was supposed to?"

"That's usually the sort of thing a good boyfriend would do, so yes," Rouge growled.

"Oh. Sorry," Knuckles said self-consciously.

"So why do Shadow and Omega know?" Tails asked.

"Because they're my teammates and I trust them implicitly. That, and they helped me out with something involving my past a little while ago, so they kind of had to be brought up to speed on everything if they were to be of any help to me in resolving the matter," Rouge said.

"Man, that was one heck of an adventure," Shadow recalled fondly.

"I-GOT-TO-KILL-THINGS," Omega said happily.

"You guys had some huge adventure and didn't invite or tell me about it?" Sonic asked, looking hurt.

"We have lives and adventures outside of you, blue hedgehog. It's not like EVERYTHING we do has to revolve around your exploits, after all," Shadow said flatly.

"IT-JUST-SEEMS-LIKE-IT-DOES-SOMETIMES," Omega added.

"I guess so…" Sonic admitted reluctantly.

"Are we going to hear about this big adventure you went on without us?" Tails asked.

"I'll get to it, yes," Rouge promised. "Anyway, it all began many years ago, in a distant land, when I was a little girl not much older than Cream."

"Oh boy!" Cream squeaked.

"A distant land? You mean you didn't grow up on the streets, poor and destitute, constantly struggling for food and safety and eventually resorting to thievery to drag yourself out of that life and ensure you'd never be that helpless again?" Amy asked in surprise.

"What? Where would you possibly get an idea like that?" Asked the startled and offended Rouge.

"Isn't that how all skanky jewel thieves who love to show a bit too much skin and cleavage get their start?" Amy asked.

"The Hard-Boiled Private Eye Network implies as much, yes," Vector agreed.

"How dare you! I've never been poor a day in my life!" Rouge shouted indignantly.

"Huh? But if you don't need the money, why do you steal things?" Sonic asked.

"For the thrill of it, naturally. There's also another reason, which I'm getting to," Rouge said, glaring at Amy. "Growing up on the streets… Honestly! What, were you going to accuse me of selling my body just to provide for myself next?"

"N-no, of course not!" Amy stammered, flushing in an obvious lie.

"Selling your body? You mean like donating organs and other parts to hospitals to help sick people?" Cream asked.

There was an awkward pause. "Um… Yes, Cream, that's exactly what she meant," Espio said slowly.

Cream gave him a half-lidded look. "That's not what she meant at all, was it?"

"No, it's not," the chameleon admitted sheepishly.

"It's another one of those things I'm too young to understand just yet, isn't it?" The rabbit pressed.

"Yes, it is," the chameleon agreed.

Cream sighed. "I'm really getting tired of those…"

"So, it all started in a distant land," Mighty prompted. "Which one?"

"Fangsylvania, land of eternal darkness," Rouge said promptly.

Everyone stared at her. "Fangsylvania? I've been all over the world, but I don't think I've ever been _there_ …" Sonic murmured.

"You wouldn't have. It's a place you can only get to if you already know where it is," Rouge said.

"Ah, a magical country, then," Blaze realized, her interest piqued.

"I'd think the 'land of eternal darkness' part would imply as much," Mighty said.

Rouge nodded. "Pretty much, yes, though probably with a bit of a different atmosphere than yours."

"I am intrigued. Go on," the cat queen said.

"Fangsylvania…The name sounds vaguely familiar…" Tails murmured.

"And kind of ominous. 'Land of eternal darkness?' Seriously? Doesn't sound like a very nice place…" Charmy muttered.

"It's a wonderful place!...well, for the kinds of people who live there. You might not like it quite as much," Rouge admitted.

"I've heard stories about that place, but I thought they were just that, stories," said the surprised Amy. She shuddered. "And not exactly nice ones, at that…"

"Don't most of the things we run into turn out to be from stories thought to be just stories?" Knuckles pointed out.

"True," Amy admitted grudgingly.

"I assure you, those stories are mostly…well…okay, just a little exaggerated," Rouge conceded.

Cream gasped. "You're from a magic kingdom, Ms. Rouge? Does that mean you're…a _princess?_ "

Amy snorted. "Please, like a princess would go around stealing jewels and dressing like that!"

"Actually, I _am_ a princess," Rouge said.

Amy did a double-take. "Wait, WHAT?!"

Cream squealed in delight, stars in her eyes. "Wait, seriously?!" said the astonished Vector.

"Didn't see that coming," said the surprised Tails.

"Knux, why didn't you ever tell us?!" Sonic demanded.

"I had no idea!" the echidna protested.

Rouge's eye twitched. "Knuckles, I _told_ you I was one!"

"When you said I should treat you like a princess, I thought you meant figuratively!" Knuckles argued. Rouge sighed and facepalmed.

"You're…you're a princess?" Amy whispered, dumbfounded. "No…no way…there's no way you can be one!"

Rouge frowned. "You know, I'm getting a little tired of your not-so-subtle implications that you don't think very much of me, Amy. I am indeed a princess…next in line to the Throne of Night, first daughter and heir of Blanc the Bat, Sovereign of all Fangsylvania, Master of Monsters, Queen of Night, Empress of Darkness, and Supreme Ruler of all Vampires."

Everyone stared at Rouge incredulously. "You're a vampire AND a princess?!" Vector shouted.

"Yep," Rouge said.

"Your mother's name is Blank?" asked a confused Charmy.

"No, Blanc. French for white, just like my name is French for red," Rouge explained.

"Ohhh. And here I thought you were named after a line of makeup or something," the bee said. The bat rolled her eyes.

Cream squealed even louder. "But that's… Actually a lot easier to swallow," Amy admitted.

"Why, because she's a bat?" Mighty asked.

"For shame, Amy! That's an unfair stereotype and you know it!" Tails scolded the hedgehog.

"What? No, it's because of how she dresses and acts," Amy said.

"Oh. Yeah, I can see it," Tails admitted. Everyone else nodded in agreement. Rouge frowned at them.

"She's a vampire?! Did you know this?!" Sonic asked Knuckles.

The echidna nodded. "Yeah."

"… And you never thought to tell us because…?" Sonic prompted.

Knuckles blinked. "Because it's not a big deal, is it?"

Everyone stared at him for long moment. "Not a big deal," Espeo said after a moment. "Your girlfriend is a vampire and it's _not a big deal?_ "

Knuckles shrugged. "Well yeah, why would it be?" Rouge cooed and kissed him on the cheek, convincing him he'd said the right thing.

"Awww, that's so sweet!" Amy gushed. "…Unless he's being stupid."

"It's Knuckles," Sonic pointed out.

"Ah. Right. Stupid," Amy said.

"Hey!" Knuckles said indignantly.

"… Knuckles, do you actually know what a vampire is?" Tails asked after a moment.

Knuckles nodded. "Yes, it's what Rouge is."

"And that is…?" Tails questioned.

"You know… This," Knuckles said, vaguely gesturing at Rouge, who smirked and posed seductively. "Leathery wings, big ears, fangs, echolocation, power over darkness, a thirst for blood…"

"Knuckles, those are all things common to bats, _except_ for the last two," Tails said patiently.

Knuckles looked confused. "What are you talking about? Rouge can do those last two things."

"Yes, but most bats _can't_ , because not all bats are _vampires,_ " Tails and said very carefully.

Knuckles stared at the fox for long moment. "They aren't?"

"No," Tails said.

"Oh," Knuckles said. "Oops." Just about everyone facepalmed, including Rouge, who was both astounded at how uninformed and oblivious her boyfriend was about her species and disbelieving that she was surprised by this. "Well… I'm still not sure I understand why it's a big deal."

"Which is very sweet of you," Rouge said, kissing the echidna's cheek.

"It's a big deal because vampires aren't like normal Mobians. They're ageless, incredibly strong, nigh-unkillable supernatural beings who feast on the blood of the living to sustain themselves because they have none of their own, on account of being undead," Tails explained.

"Undead? Well, of course she's undead, if she were dead she'd be a corpse!" said the confused Knuckles.

"Undead isn't the same as being alive," Blaze said.

Knuckles gave her a confused look. "It's not? But the name implies it's the opposite of being dead! Why don't they call it something else?"

"Like what?" Blaze asked.

Knuckles scratched his head. "Like…uh… Okay, I've got nothing. Wait… Rouge, you don't have any blood of your own?"

Rouge raised an eyebrow. "No. Why did you think I drank yours all the time?"

"I… Always assumed it was some sort of kink of yours," Knuckles said in embarrassment.

"Ah, so that explains the weird hickeys…" Vector murmured in amusement.

"Well, it is, but it's also my primary way of feeding myself," Rouge said.

"But… Your heart…" Said the confused Knuckles. "Doesn't that need blood or something to work?"

"Feel it," Rouge said.

Cautiously, Knuckles placed a hand on her chest. The more dirty-minded of the group tried not to think too much about that. The echidna's eyes widened in shock, and he jerked his hand away. "I don't feel anything!"

"That's because I don't _have_ a heart. Just a solid core of Dark Power animating my body," Rouge explained. "It's one of the biggest things separating me from being alive like the rest of you and being… Well, what I actually am."

"So you've got a black heart, or are heartless, more or less? Figures," Amy muttered to herself. Rouge glared at her.

Knuckles stared into the distance for a long moment. "Whoa," he said finally.

"Is this a deal-breaker?" Rouge asked in concern.

 _Say yes say yes say yes say yes,_ Shadow thought to himself.

"I'm, uh, I'm not sure," Knuckles admitted, scratching the back of his head. "I don't _think_ it is, but… I need to think about this for a while. And maybe learn a bit more about what a vampire actually is, instead of what I thought they were."

"That's fair," Rouge said as Shadow grunted in disappointment. Omega patted him on the shoulder sympathetically, nearly knocking him over.

"How did you not know any this? You have a television! You visit the surface all the time! Vampires are ridiculously popular in all forms of media!" Vector said incredulously.

"My reception isn't always that good, and I don't usually pay much attention to horror movies," Knuckles confessed. "And it's not like I spend a lot of time seeing movies about vampires when we're on the surface, anyway."

"I took you to a vampire movie last week!" Rouge said.

"I thought it was a comedy considering how often you pointed and laughed at the screen—whenever we weren't making out, anyway-so I didn't really think about it too much," Knuckles confessed sheepishly.

"Well, that movie _was_ hilariously inaccurate," Rouge admitted.

"Wait… But if you're a vampire, how come you're okay being out in the sunlight without bursting into flames or whatever?" Asked the confused Espio.

"And can you spark-" Cream started eagerly.

"Cream, darling, I love you dearly, but if you finish that sentence I'm afraid I will have no choice but to lock you in the deepest, darkest dungeons of my Castle, where you will be tortured constantly in new and inventively ever-changing ways, each more horrific and awful than the last, for the rest of your natural life, and then quite a few decades if not centuries beyond that as we prolong it through unnatural means, before ripping your soul out of your body and enslaving both it and your lifeless husk to serve me forevermore," Rouge said calmly. Cream yelped and turned very pale, shivering in terror.

"Rouge, that was rather excessive, don't you think?" Amy accused the bat.

Rouge sighed and massaged her temples. "Sorry, but the S-word is a bit of a sore spot for my kind."

"Yeah, I suppose I'd be pissed off by that kind of thing too if a story portraying hedgehogs like…well, _that_ came out," Sonic admitted. The others nodded in reluctant agreement.

"You have a Castle?" Charmy asked.

"Of course I do, I'm a vampire Princess! What kind of undead royalty would I be without one?" Rouge scoffed.

"Fair enough," the bee said.

"You still haven't answered my original question," Vector pointed out.

Rouge chuckled. "Darling, my kind has been around for a very, _very_ long time. Long enough so that we have more than a little influence on what all the stories say about us. Do you _really_ think we'd allow our weaknesses to be public knowledge? We've polluted the well of folklore and legend for so long that any grain of truth about our vulnerabilities will be completely unrecognizable from the lies."

"Wait…but, then doesn't that mean you're also responsible for the idea that vampires spar—er, do that?" asked a confused Amy.

"It was supposed to be a joke, okay?! We never thought it would become so _popular!_ " Rouge snapped, flushing. "And the idiot responsible has been punished appropriately, I promise you that…"

"That… Actually makes a lot of sense," Tails admitted. "Not only does it why vampires are so popular, but also why there's so many different conflicting takes on what powers and weaknesses they have in the media and older stories."

Espio nodded in agreement. "Like how jiangshi can be defeated by taking off their left sock, putting a graveyard toadstool in it, and throwing it in a river."

"…Seriously?" said an incredulous Charmy.

"Magic has strange rules. It makes as much sense as anything else!...or, on the other hand, it could be a story made up by vampires to make fun of us… which would imply vampires have an alarming amount of control over society and may in fact validate some of the more crackpot conspiracy theories out there," the chameleon said darkly.

"Then does that mean the Ancient Aliens guy might be _right?_ " a horrified Charmy asked.

"No, he's just a moron," Espio said.

"But…wait, the Black Arms left some ruins here thousands of years ago, and then there's Bablyon Garden-" started the confused Knuckles.

"Doesn't mean he's not a moron," Espio said firmly.

"I always figured it was because there are different _kinds_ of vampires," Amy confessed. "And so different rules applied to them."

Blaze nodded in agreement. "That is how it works in my world, yes."

"You have vampires in your world? Wait, of course you do. Stupid question," Amy said with a roll of her eyes.

"Really? What are they like?" asked an interested Rouge.

Blaze shrugged. "There's a wide variety. Some are friendly enough. Others…are not. The unfriendly ones don't last very long in my kingdom."

"I can imagine," Rouge said in amusement. "In any event, there may be other types of vampires in this world…or there might not be. I'm certainly not going to tell you _that_ much. I may trust you guys, but not _that_ much."

Blaze nodded. "Perfectly understandable."

"So…okay, you're a vampire princess. Weird, but given some of the rest of us, that's not saying much," Mighty said. "But how does that lead to jewel theft and spying?"

Rouge rolled her eyes. "I'm getting to that! It all started many years ago, when I was a child living in my mother's palace…"

…

It was night in Fangsylvania. That was nothing new, though. It was _always_ night.

Glittering stars twinkled coldly in the pitch black sky, arranged in strange and unfamiliar constellations unlike any mortal astronomers had ever seen. The moon was huge and red as blood, a long black slit running down its surface to give it the impression of a huge crimson eye staring balefully down at the world below.

And what world did this eye behold? A land enveloped in shadow and darkness. Jagged mountains jutted from the ground to encircle the realm from horizon to horizon, looking eerily like the gargantuan fangs of some monstrous, antediluvian horror. Forests of twisted, leafless trees, their gnarled branches reaching skyward like the claws of the damned. Deserts of glittering white sand so pale it could be mistaken for snow…or the ground-up bones of uncounted millions. Vast bodies of water so still and dark they were perfect mirrors of the night sky above, the stars and moon reflected perfectly in their surfaces, to the point where one could easily be forgiven for fearing that if they tried to swim out too far they might fall forevermore into the deepest darkness of space… And they might not be entirely wrong to believe that. Villages so ramshackle and decrepit that, even though all the lights were on in the windows, one would get the impression that they were ghost towns…which was exactly what they were, in more ways than one. Cyclopean pillars and statues of strange, nightmarish figures rising from the ground, like petrified Giants. Gargantuan bones, holdovers from some monstrosity so big and ancient that even the mighty dinosaurs would've ran in terror from it littered the land, ghoulish cities rising up around and built upon their pale arches and spurs. Wails and moans and screams and howls and roars echoed across the land, so that while the night was dark, it was never silent, and always full of terror.

And in the center of this dark realm was the Castle. Taller than any mountain, larger than any other man-made edifice, it rose up and up towards the sky, wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, spire upon spire, a citadel so great that it cast all the land around it into even deeper shadow, the embodiment of every Gothic architect's fevered imaginations or dark lord's wet dream mashed together and turned up to eleven. Hideous gargoyles lined the walls, their lidless gazes staring constantly out at the world below. The entire structure seem to be carved from jet black stone, screaming faces etched into the bricks and slabs of rock, the mortar holding them together an unsettling shade of red. Stained glass windows dotted the great structure, the light blazing from within shattered into countless colors and causing parts of the castle to seem to radiate a discordant corona completely at odds with the pitch black smoke pouring from the thousands of chimneys and creeping out like dark mist from numerous orifices. It had four great gates lining its base, each resembling a massive monster carved from stone, their huge fanged mouths serving as portals, evil red light shining from their eyes. The towers rose and rose, some built atop each other, others intertwined around one another, all reaching, striving, for the stars above. Perched atop the castle's center and apex rose an immense statue resembling a nightmarish mix of bat, dragon, and demon, its six great wings stretched outwards, its four claws reaching out with great beacons blazing in them, its long tail curling around the smaller spires below it, its fanged mouth opened in a fierce snarl, red light burning in its eye sockets and shining outwards across the land. It was so tall that it almost seemed to reach the moon, and perhaps it was a trick of the light or some supernatural phenomena, but occasionally what looked like a drop of blood fell from the moon and landed in the sculpture's open mouth, flowing away into channels and aqueducts spread throughout the monumental fortress.

And from her perch on a balcony high up the side of the great statue, a young Rouge the Bat stared out across the countryside, smiling in awe at the beauty of the land which would one day be hers.

…

"Whoa," said an amazed Sonic. "Okay, I've _definitely_ never been there before." He grinned. "But now I want to. Sounds pretty cool!"

"It sounds like many of the other vampire dominions I've visited in my day," Blaze commented. "Most of them don't have castles that big, though. Even _mine_ isn't that large. I wonder if I should be jealous."

"How did you _make_ something that big?!" Asked an incredulous Mighty. "That's bigger than most cities!"

"Yeah, even Sauron'd feel Barad-dûr was inadequate in comparison," Tails agreed.

"It wasn't that hard, really. It just required a few thousand years of unceasing labor, the blood and soul sacrifice of a few million thralls, and liberal use of dark magic," Rouge said breezily. "Having a mostly immortal, tireless, and totally obedient workforce and the ability to raise the dead to serve you makes long-term construction projects a lot easier. And of course, we're _still_ adding to it. Every ruler has a responsibility to bring something new to it. I have a few plans for a new wing or two once I'm in charge…"

"That's not exactly the kind of magic kingdom I was envisioning," Cream said timidly.

Amy snorted. "Well, it's a kingdom ruled by vampires, of _course_ it's going to be a dark and horrible place!"

"Hey now! _Dark_ it may be, but horrible? It may look that way to you, but to the people there it's practically Paradise!" Rouge said, offended. "From my perspective, it's _your_ lands that are drab and ugly. And have way too much sun."

"I guess it's a matter of perspective," Espio conceded.

"Like how to us absolutely anywhere would be better than the apartment we're stuck in, but to the cockroaches and other horrible things infesting the joint it's the best place ever?" Vector asked.

"Pretty much, yeah," the chameleon agreed.

"And just who _does_ live there, exactly?" Knuckles asked. "More vampires?"

"And other things," Rouge affirmed. "As I'm sure you've noticed, Fangsylvania isn't… Quite like the rest of this world."

"The strange constellations, the eternal night, and the fact that the moon was practically a giant red eye crying blood pointed to that, yes," Tails said.

" _Was_ that blood?" asked a disturbed Cream.

"It was, and it's absolutely _delicious_. Anyway, it's a realm both here and… Not. It's a sort of in-between place, halfway between the world you know and… Somewhere a lot less pleasant," Rouge said. "A place that gives even us creatures of the night shivers. At the same time, however, that other place is the source of much of what makes us… Us. You know all those stories of bogeyman? Of things that hide in the closet or under the bed, the things that go bump in the night? Well, they're real. _All_ of them, and Fangsylvania's where they all come from."

Cream turned very pale and clutched Cheese very hard. "… I think I'm going to sleep with the lights on for the rest of my life now," she said very quietly.

"Probably a good idea," Rouge said.

"So… Things like ghosts, werewolves, fish men…?" Charmy asked.

"Just about every monster that's ever had a story told about it in film or print or word-of-mouth exists there, yes," Rouge said. "And one day, I shall rule over all of them."

"Well, that's a cheery thought," Vector said half-jokingly, looking somewhat nervous.

"So… Does that mean we should be worried about a possible future war against monsters or something?" Sonic asked seriously.

Rouge laughed. "To what end? We have no interest in taking over the world. After all, if we ate everyone who'd be left for us to feed on? In fact, a case could be made that we _already_ rule the world. Or did you think the popularity of horror and monster movies and _especially_ stories about vampires were just a coincidence?"

"… Well, that's worrying," Tails said after a moment as they all digested this unsettling idea.

"Wait, so you're saying your people may already rule the world?! But how come nobody's noticed?" Mighty demanded.

"One of the advantages of immortality is being able to play the long game. There are easier and subtler ways to conquer the world if you're very patient about it then constantly wasting time and resources on robot armies or airship battalions," Rouge said.

"That's probably true," Blaze admitted. "However, I'm not exactly good at 'subtle' when it comes to most of my conquests, which has pissed off more than a few ancient cabals that have been allegedly ruling the world in secret for millennia. It's practically a hobby by now."

"Your family rules the world? Should…I be trying to stop you, then?" asked an uncertain Sonic.

"Why?" Rouge asked, looking honestly perplexed.

Sonic blinked. "…Because according to you, the world is being secretly controlled by a race of blood-drinking deathless supernatural beings?"

"And? Are we doing such a terrible job of running the planet that it _needs_ liberation?" Rouge asked.

"W-well…you…it…could be better…" Sonic murmured, a little flustered.

"It could also be a lot worse," Rouge pointed out. "Besides, it would be hypocritical of you to criticize us when you're perfectly fine with your girlfriend conquering _her_ planet."

"She has a point, beloved," Blaze said, looking amused.

"Yeah, yeah," Sonic grumbled, turning red.

"Wait, so… If you're immortal… Then… How old are you?" Asked a confused Knuckles.

Amy gasped. "Knuckles! You can't ask a lady her age!"

"I can't? Why not?" Asked the confused echidna.

"Because it's _rude,_ that's why!" She snapped.

"And I'd lie about it anyway. Let's just say that I'm still fairly young as far as vampires go, and you're probably much older than I am, Knuckles, considering how long ago your civilization was wiped out and you were born," Rouge said.

"Oh," Knuckles said.

"Wait, wait… So… Let me get this straight… Knuckles is immortal, Rouge is immortal, Blaze is immortal through some fruit thing she hasn't explained yet, Shadow is immortal….Am I missing anyone here?" Vector asked.

"ME," Omega said.

The crocodile frowned. "Do you count?"

Omega shrugged. "I-DON'T-SEE-WHY-NOT."

"Right. So… That makes five of us who are immortal-" Vector continued.

"Actually, Cheese and I are immortal too," Cream spoke up.

"What? Since when?" Asked the startled Amy.

"Since I defeated the Goblin King Jared and became Queen of the Chao," Cream said.

Everyone stared at her. "When did this happen?" Asked a dumbfounded Charmy.

"A few days ago," the rabbit said.

"And you didn't mention it because…?" Tails asked.

Cream shrugged. "It didn't seem that important, really. And I didn't want to brag."

Blaze shook her head in amusement. "Cream, you are something else."

"Is that a good thing?" the rabbit asked nervously.

"I should think so," the feline said warmly, much to Cream's relief. "I wouldn't mind hearing about that story another time, though."

"Sure thing!" Cream said cheerfully.

Sonic scratched his head in disbelief. "… Does _everyone_ go on adventures without me?!"

"Our lives don't revolve around you, Sonic," Shadow repeated.

"Though it kind of feels like it does at times…" Tails muttered.

"So, anyway, that means at least _six_ —er, seven—of us are immortal, and the rest aren't. That doesn't seem very fair!" Vector complained.

"Actually, in the FYOO-CHURR thanks to the use of breakthroughs in medical science and life extending technologies that haven't been invented in this era yet, death has become little more than a scary story we tell to frighten children, so I suppose I count as well," Silver spoke up.

Vector threw his hands upwards in exasperation. "Great, and a fat lot of good that does us _now!_ " Silver opened his mouth as if to say something, hesitated, and then shut it.

"Hey, wait, if Rouge is going to be the next Queen of the vampires and apparently secret ruler of Earth… Does that mean that if she and Knuckles get hitched, he'll become King?" Charmy wondered.

Everyone paused to consider this for a moment. "… Well, there's a horrifying thought," Shadow said.

"Hey! I could make a good King!" Knuckles protested.

"No you couldn't," Espio said.

"And how do you know that?" Knuckles asked indignantly.

"If you can't be bothered to go more than day without the sacred artifact under your charge getting stolen or broken, do you _really_ think you're ready to have the responsibility of running an entire planet?" Shadow asked bluntly.

"… I could grow into it…" The echidna said lamely.

"Like you've grown into being a great Guardian of the Master Emerald, after being at it for centuries?" Blaze asked pointedly.

"… Shut up," Knuckles grumbled.

"It's a moot point anyway, if I _were_ to marry Knuckles, he wouldn't be King. My chief consort, most definitely, but not King," Rouge said. "Absolute power concentrated in one individual at a time is how we vampires do things. In more ways than one, in fact."

Blaze nodded in understanding. "Understandable. It is much the same in my kingdom…but I myself am debating on what role Sonic will take should we ever wed. My initial inclination was to just name him my consort, but… Given that he is apparently King of some (literal) storybook realm called Camelot…"

"So I might be King someday? Awesome!" Sonic said eagerly, hiding his trepidation at the idea of getting married. He paused. "Wait, does this mean I'm gonna have to do paperwork? I do not have the patience for paperwork. At all."

Blaze chuckled. "Don't worry, beloved, that's what we have bureaucrats for, so we can do actually _important_ things like going on adventures and crushing enemies beneath our heels while they take care of the minutiae."

"Sweet," Sonic said in relief.

"Him? Marry HER?! Not on my watch…" Amy growled.

"You know, Blaze has a lot more to offer Sonic than you. A kingdom, endless adventure, a partner who could truly be his equal, possibly immortality… Why should he choose you over her?" Charmy commented.

"Because only I can give him TRUE LOVE!" Amy declared.

"No, I'm pretty sure she can give him that too," Espio said.

"LIES!" Amy shrieked.

"So I'm not going to be King? Darn," Knuckles said dejectedly.

"It's for the best, Knuckles. You probably wouldn't enjoy it anyway," Shadow said, trying to hide a smirk and failing. "You'd have to make public appearances all the time, and give speeches, and kiss babies and the like. You don't do well with crowds, and you're not fond of little children."

"Yeah, that's true," Knuckles agreed.

"I'm a little child," Cream said in alarm.

"To be honest, Cream, there are times when I look at you and get the willies," Knuckles admitted. Cream pouted, causing the echidna to shiver.

"So, Rouge, does that mean your father is just your mother's chief consort or something?" Tails asked.

Rouge paused. "My…father?"

"Yeah. You know, your other parent? I mean, it's not like your mom had you all by herself…" Mighty trailed off. "Or…did you? I actually have no idea how vampire reproduction works."

"I didn't even know they _could_ reproduce. Figured they just bit people to make more and that was that," Amy said.

"No, no, we can reproduce, though it's not easy due to being…well, not quite alive," Rouge said distractedly.

"Then who was your father?" Tails asked.

Rouge stared into the distance for a long while before shrugging. "You know, I don't actually know."

"Huh?" everyone except Shadow and Omega said in surprise.

"How can you not know? Or does your mom sleep around so much it's impossible to tell who it is?" Amy sort-of sneered.

Rouge scowled at the pink hedgehog. "I never asked, and she never brought it up. Nobody did. It was never really important, I suppose."

"How can not knowing who your dad is not be important?!" Charmy, who didn't know anything about his parents except that they didn't want him, demanded.

Rouge shrugged. "My mother is Queen of the Vampires, and she's all that I've ever known. That's enough for me, really. I never wanted or needed a father growing up, Mother and everyone in the castle did a well enough job of raising me; I had no shortage of surrogate parental figures. If he wanted badly enough to be a part of my life, he'd have been there. But he wasn't, so…" She shrugged again. "Perhaps I'll ask Mother sometime who my father was. Perhaps I won't. While I suppose I _am_ mildly curious now, ultimately, it's not something that matters to me very much."

"I just…I just don't get that…" said the bewildered Charmy.

"Some people just feel differently about their parents, I suppose," Espio said.

Shadow nodded. "I never had a mother. Just the Professor and Maria. I think I turned out okay…more or less."

"…That's…very debatable," Vector said. The black hedgehog scowled at him.

"Dad hasn't been a part of my life for years…I don't miss him, honestly," Amy admitted.

"I'm glad my Dad wasn't part of my life," Knuckles said bluntly. "He was a jerk."

"I've never had any parents. I never needed them, but…I suppose it might be nice to have some," Blaze said wistfully.

"Well, um…my parents might be willing to oblige, if we, you know…" Sonic muttered with a blush.

Blaze smiled gratefully. "Thank you, beloved. That is very much appreciated." Amy growled.

"I guess…" Charmy said, not looking like he liked it very much.

"While all of this is fascinating, it doesn't get us any closer to learning the reasons behind Rouge's line of work," Silver prompted.

"Right, right. Back on track," Rouge agreed with a nod. "So, there I was, sitting on my balcony and gazing out at the kingdom that would one day be mine…"

…

Young Rouge leaned on the railing of her balcony, chin resting in one hand as she stared out at the darkened landscape spread out before her. Although still very young, even for a vampire, she was already quite beautiful—everybody said so, and while yes, they kind of _had_ to, Rouge was self-aware enough to know it was true—and signs of the ravishing knockout she would become once she fully matured were already self-evident in her soft snow-white fur, elegant fangs, strong and graceful pitch-black wings, deep blue eyes, shimmering shoulder-length hair, and the way she was able to carry herself with such poise and confidence that made it clear to all she was the most important thing in any room she entered, and you had better be aware of it. Her figure had yet to develop-much to her dismay- but even so she felt she looked quite lovely in how she filled in her black spidersilk blouse and skirt, embroidered with intricate patterns of bats, signs of power and protection, and black diamonds; a pair of werewolfhide slippers providing her delicate feet with comfort and a few rings, a skull necklace, and a hair adornment resembling a pair of bat wings spreading from the back of her skull the only jewelry she felt like wearing that night.

…

"Excuse me, but was all that really necessary?" Blaze interrupted.

"Yeah, that was basically just you gushing over how pretty you used to be," Amy complained.

Rouge scowled. " _Used_ to be? I'm an immortal vampire princess who will forever be young and beautiful, I think I can afford to be a little vain if I want."

"If only the rest of us could be so lucky…" Vector grumbled jealously.

"Anyway, this is my story and I can tell it any way I want…but I suppose I was digressing a bit," Rouge admitted. "Anyway…"

…

A wistful smile graced her lips as she looked out at the dominion that would one day be hers to rule, her vampiric eyesight allowing her to make out fine details of the countryside miles away, all the way out to the Demonfang Mountain Range which encircled Fangsylvania. If she so chose, she could focus on any one of her future subjects in any of the towns and cities and villages dotting the landscape and observe them as if she were only feet away from them, even at this range. She didn't feel like being a voyeur at the moment, however, and was content to take it all in from a broader perspective.

 _One day, all this will be mine,_ she thought with a thrill of delight and anticipation. Oh, she knew it wouldn't be for quite some time, decades if not centuries––her mother wasn't weakening or getting any older, and it would be a while before she decided to step down- but Rouge could afford to be patient. After all, time was the greatest commodity an immortal could possess. All good things came if you waited long enough.

"A lovely view, isn't it?"

Rouge glanced away from the vista as a cloud of (non-anthropomorphic) bats swarmed down from the sky, shrieking and chittering loudly. They swirled around her a few times, causing her to smile in delight as their leathery wings brushed against her face, before they flew away, looping about in the air again before coming together just a few feet away from her, their wings and claws interlocking into a single black, writhing mass…

Which then stilled. The bats slowly parted, but as they did so, they were no longer bats, but a pair of great black wings, darker than the night sky and seeming to have bottomless depths and volume. The wings were attached to the back of a tall, elegant, and impossibly beautiful bat bearing a clear resemblance to Rouge if she were much older—or perhaps Rouge bore a clear resemblance to her, if she were much younger?-wearing a floor-length gown of a crimson material that looked as if it were made of blood turned to fabric, hugging her incredibly curvaceous hourglass figure so tightly it might as well have been a second layer of skin, long slits in the sides going all the way up to the hips revealing flashes of her _very_ shapely legs that seemed to go on forever, ending in a pair of black slippers with grinning demon faces on the tongues and gilded bat wings swooping back from the heels. The shadows seemed to rush to her side, crawling up the length of her dress and solidifying into black swirls and sigils forming strange patterns across her body, which only seemed to accentuate her curves. She had an _incredibly_ low neckline—practically a v-shaped cut in the upper part of her gown going down to her navel—offering a tantalizing glimpse of her ample cleavage, as well as the black bat-shaped mark that seemed to be burned into her bone-white fur in the stretch of exposed flesh between her neck and bosom. Her gown was sleeveless, exposing her long, slender arms, ending in tapering fingers with nails more like claws, each digit adorned with a ring that had a differently-colored jewel resembling the skull of some monster or demon. Her hair was long and black in contrast to her white fur and red garment, tumbling down her back all the way to the ground, a complex golden ornament resembling a four-winged bat perched atop her head, between her large, pointy ears. A pair of elegant fangs poked out from her sinfully red luscious lips, which were usually formed into an amused or seductive smirk but were now in a warm, fond smile. Her eyes were a pair of red burning dots in a pitch-black field, and usually fixed into a stare that could arouse one into bottomless terror and/or desire and strip all the secrets of a soul so that they lay defenseless before her baleful, pitiless gaze…but those eyes held no terror for Rouge now, nor had they ever. And why should they? For this was none other than Blanc the Bat, Sovereign of all Fangsylvania, Master of Monsters, Queen of Night, Empress of Darkness, and Supreme Ruler of all Vampires….

And her mother.

…

"Wow. _That's_ your mom?" Vector whistled.

"And here I thought _you_ were hot as hell…" Espio murmured.

"Yep. That's a vampire queen, all right," Blaze said, speaking from experience.

"I can see where you get it from," Amy commented.

"I'll choose to believe you're referring to my stunning good looks and fashion sense and not what I suspect you actually mean," Rouge said with a sniff.

"Rouge, your mother is…um…I mean…y-you look a lot like her," Knuckles stammered awkwardly.

Rouge smiled. "Thank you, Knuckles. As clumsy as that compliment was, I appreciate that." She grinned. "And if you think _she's_ fine, let me assure you that I have yet to fully mature. Once I have, well…" She chuckled as Knuckles turned even redder.

Mighty tried to comprehend this. He failed. "I think that level of sex appeal is impossible for mortal minds to imagine."

"I can imagine it," Shadow said.

"You're not mortal," Tails pointed out.

"True," the black hedgehog admitted.

"Your mother is very beautiful, Miss Rouge. I'm sure you'll look even prettier once you become Queen!" Cream said encouragingly.

"Why thank you, Cream. And I'm sure you'll be one hell of a knockout once you grow up, too. After all, just look at _your_ mother," Rouge said, rubbing the rabbit's head fondly.

"Yeah, just look at her," Vector said, eyes glazing over as he started to drool. His teammates grimaced.

"Okay, I hate to ruin the mood, but I feel like I have to address the elephant in the room. Rouge, is your mother evil?" Sonic asked bluntly.

"Sonic! That's not very polite!" Amy hissed.

"Whatever gave you that idea?" asked the perplexed Rouge.

"She's an immortal vampire with a list of titles that would make a Dark Lord blush, secretly rules the world, has her own kingdom of darkness populated by monsters, lives in a very evil-looking castle…" Sonic listed. "I'm aware I could be stereotyping here, but those are usually the marks of a bad guy."

"He has a point," Blaze admitted. "Quite a few villains in my world match that description as well. Then again, so do a handful of my allies…"

Rouge frowned thoughtfully. "Is my mother evil…? Well, she's certainly never called herself a villain, though that doesn't mean much since lots of wicked people never admit they're evil. _I_ don't believe she's evil, but she's my mother and I love her very much so I'm hardly unbiased. Her subjects both love and fear her, but they're monsters and I'm not sure ordinary humans or Mobians would feel the same way. I won't say she's 'beyond good or evil,' because most of those who claim that pretty much _are_ evil. I share many of the same beliefs and morals as her, and intend to follow her example once I take the throne, so…do you believe _I'm_ evil, Sonic?"

Sonic considered this. "I don't believe you're evil," he said finally. "But I wouldn't exactly say you're _good_ either. I mean, you've done lots of good things, but…"

"Also a lot of bad, very little of which I regret," Rouge agreed. "Neither does my mother. _You_ may be unambiguously good, and guys like Eggman unambiguously evil, but not everyone else can be neatly placed in one camp or another. I suppose you could say we're gray, but if we're a lighter or darker shade may vary from day-to-day or in the eye of the beholder."

"The same could be said of us, as well," Shadow said, indicating himself and Omega.

"I'VE-HELPED-SAVE-THE-WORLD-LOTS-OF-TIMES, BUT-I-ALSO-KIND-OF-WANT-TO-BLOW-IT-UP," the robot agreed.

Sonic mulled this over for a few minutes, and then shrugged. "Well, that's a good enough answer for me. Heck, my girlfriend's also either an evil overlord or a benevolent god-queen depending on who you talk to in her world, and if I'm cool with that, I suppose I can be cool with this, too." He frowned. "Of course, if you or your mom ever take a turn for the black, I'm coming for you."

Rouge chuckled. "I would expect nothing less."

…

"Mother! You're back!" Rouge squealed in delight, before remembering that princesses were not supposed to squeal in delight, coughed, and more politely said, "Er, I mean, Mother, welcome back. How was your trip?"

Blanc did not walk so much as _glide_ across the floor towards her daughter, chuckling as she tousled Rouge's hair affectionately. "It went rather well, thank you…and you may relax, daughter. In formal company I expect you to behave like the royal you are, but when it's just the two of us you may act as you wish."

What Rouge wished for at that moment was to hug her mother, and so she did.

…

"Awww," everyone cooed.

"This is a side of you we've never seen before, Rouge," Amy commented in surprise.

"Yeah, you don't even act that way with me," said the amazed Knuckles.

Rouge shrugged. "I was a very affectionate child. And what can I say? I really love my mom." Those present who had mothers nodded in understanding.

…

Blanc returned the embrace, wrapping her arms and folding her wings around her daughter, and as darkness enveloped them both, the rest of the universe seemed to blip out of existence, and for a moment, nothing existed except for mother and daughter.

But sadly, the moment could not last forever, and Blanc's wings opened up again, exchanging one darkness for another. "You never answered my question," the elder vampire said to her daughter.

It took Rouge a few moments for her to realize what she was talking about. "Oh! Yes, very much so."

Blanc nodded and turned to look out at the land stretching out before them as well. "I have lived in this land for thousands of years, but this view has yet to fail to take my breath away. All of this will one day be yours, Rouge. Everything from the tip of this castle to the outermost peaks of the Demonfang Range. Everything the blood-red light of the moon touches is ours."

"As is the world outside," Rouge pointed out.

Blanc nodded. "Yes, but it's of a lesser priority. Most of what happens on Earth is, ultimately, important to us, but your first concern must always be for Fangsylvania. It is the seat of our power, the birthplace of our species, and the homeland of all monsters. This land is first and foremost your responsibility. The outside world can govern itself for the most part, and only rarely requires our direct intervention. Fangsylvania, though…Fangsylvania shall always require our guiding hand, lest the myriad monsters here tear themselves apart. That is why you must always strive to ensure the safety, prosperity, and well-being of its people, for if they are happy, they're less likely to try to kill each other or overthrow you."

Rouge nodded in understanding. It was pragmatic and perhaps a little cynical, but that didn't mean it was wrong. "Have you learned the names of every settlement in our great land?" Blanc continued.

Rouge nodded. "Even the ones not on the official maps."

"Good. And have you also learned the names of every inhabitant of every settlement?" Blanc asked.

Rouge hesitated. "Ah…"

Blanc chuckled. "I jest, daughter. I know you have yet to reach that point in your lessons."

"Oh," Rouge said, mollified. "Do _you_ know the names of every inhabitant of every settlement?"

"I do my best to, as well as the names of everyone who does _not_ live in a settlement, and many others besides," Blanc said.

"That must be a lot of names," Rouge commented.

"Millions," Blanc agreed. "And I know many other names aside from that, and a great many other things as well. These are things that you, too, shall learn in time."

"How am I supposed to remember all of that?" Rouge wondered.

"You are of the royal bloodline. And you are immortal. You have not only the time, but the _ability_ to learn and retain everything you will need to know to be Queen one day," Blanc said. "That does not, of course, mean that it will be quick or easy. It will take you many years to learn everything. Fortunately, we have time."

Rouge nodded. It certainly seemed daunting, but put like that, it didn't seem so bad. "And when are we going to start? I mean, I'm already learning a lot already in lessons, but not what I feel like I'm going to _need_ to know to rule one day."

"Don't underestimate or devalue what you are learning now," Blanc instructed her daughter. "You'd be surprised by how often a tidbit or fact you learned when you were small might come in handy even hundreds of years later. Especially because what you are learning now will serve as the building blocks for your more advanced education further down the road. So even though you might not necessarily enjoy doing math, or listening to boring history lectures, it will help prepare you for the even more advanced math and logistics that comes from running a kingdom, or sitting through an incredibly dull council meeting without nodding off." She paused. "Or at the very least, learning how to sleep with your eyes open. You have _no idea_ how useful a skill that is until you're on hour fifteen of that windbag Ghoulstav's never-ending filibusters and you had to miss sleep last night filling out paperwork to make sure that the mummies get enough bandages to keep them from raiding hospitals in neighboring provinces for more. I should really get around to setting a limit on how long those can go on…"

…

Blaze nodded in agreement. "Truly a valuable skill for any great ruler. It is not an easy technique to master, but one well worth learning. My esteem for your mother rises by the second, Rouge."

"I've tried it a few times, but I keep snoring too loudly, and nobody falls for it," Sonic complained.

"We can work on that, beloved. If you _do_ become King, you may need to do it one day," Blaze said.

Sonic's face twisted into a grimace. "Can't I just let _you_ handle all the boring stuff while I go out on adventures?"

"No, because I like going out on adventures too, and it would be very rude for you to go on one without me," Blaze pointed out.

"Yeah, that's true," Sonic said, glaring at his friends, still somewhat resenting that they had apparently gone on loads of adventures he had never even heard about. The nerve!

…

"In any event," Blanc continued. "I _do_ believe it is time I showed you something very important, and taught you one of the most valuable things you will ever need to know to be Queen."

Rouge's eyes lit up in excitement. "Really?!"

Blanc nodded. "Yes, I do believe you're old enough." She stretched out a hand, and suddenly a cloud of shrieking, chittering bats appeared from thin air, swooping down and gathering in a thick mass of writhing darkness a few meters in the air over the side of the balcony. The center of the dark mass throbbed and suddenly contracted outwards, revealing a stone staircase, winding downwards, burning torches lining the walls. "Come," Blanc said, spreading her wings and levitating into the air. Rouge spread her wings and flapped them a few times to rise up beside her mother (she had yet to learn how to levitate) and together the two vampires glided over the side of the balcony and into the portal, which shrank closed behind them, the bats scattering off in all directions.

Rouge glanced around the stone chamber they found themselves in. It was plain, unadorned and unremarkable in every way, and, aside from the staircase leading downwards, there seemed to be no other way out. "Are we still the Castle?" She asked warily.

"We are," Blanc confirmed.

"I don't believe I've ever been in this part," Rouge said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. "It's so… Dull. Even the servant's quarters look better. Heck, even the _dungeons_ are more interesting than this, and less… Generic Castle-y."

Blanc chuckled. "That is because we are in a very old part of the Castle, one of the first places finished when it was constructed millennia ago, though there have been quite a few renovations over the years in the part where we're going to."

"Also a part I've never been to," Rouge guessed.

Blanc nodded. "Indeed. Of course, the number of places you haven't been far outweighs those where you have been. This is a very large castle, Rouge, and very ancient. I've lived here all my considerably long life, and even I am not certain I have explored every inch of it, though I do my best to know where everything is and keep the maps up-to-date."

"If this is a very old part of the castle, and there's no way in or out via portal—which, I suppose, only you or a very select few can open—I can only assume that whatever's down here is very important," Rouge mused. "It can't be the Crypt of the Elders, I've been there…" She closed her eyes and sniffed the air, ears twitching. "I don't smell paper or blood, and can't hear any screams or moans, which means we aren't in one of your private libraries or dungeons, and I don't sense much magic beyond our own and the ambience of the castle save what feels like a powerful seal further down so we can't be in one of your artifact storehouses, which leaves…the family vault, or something similar."

Blanc nodded. "Very insightful, daughter. Yes, we are indeed going to see the vault."

His eyes gleamed. "I've always _wanted_ to see the vault! If even _half_ of the stories I've heard about the things in there are true…!"

"I can assure you, what lies within are nothing less than the greatest treasures our family possesses," Blanc said with a chuckle. "However, while that is indeed what I wish to show you, there is a lesson I must impart on you as well. Come."

She started down the staircase. Every set of torches she passed briefly flickered and went out, only to reignite once she passed. Rouge quickly hurried after her mother, not wanting to be left behind. "What do you want to teach me?" Rouge asked, intrigued. Unlike most of her tutors, whenever her mother wanted to teach her something, she usually took her somewhere or showed her something that would cause the lesson to stick in her mind better than if she just read about it in class, like that one time when she transformed the two of them into merpeople so that they could spend a week living in the Sea of Sorrows and get a better understanding of the culture and livelihood of the creatures that dwelled in it.

"What are our family mottos, Rouge?" Blanc asked.

" _Gemmis nostros omnes mundi_ —all the world's jewels belong to us—and _Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc_ -We gladly feast on those who would subdue us," Rouge recited from memory.

…

"Yeah, that first one definitely sounds like the sort of motto a family that produced you would have," Sonic said.

"Wait, isn't that last one the Addams Family motto?" Charmy interjected.

"Where do you think they got it from?" Rouge asked with a smirk.

…

Blanc nodded. "Correct. May I ask why you put the jewel one before the more intimidating one?"

Rouge blushed. "Well… I've always had a fondness for jewels…"

Blanc chuckled. "As do I, but your instincts were more correct than you know. Many people believe our original motto was the one about destroying our enemies and the jewel one came later. They are wrong. It is the other way around."

"Really?" Rouge asked, intrigued.

Blanc nodded. "A love for Gems has run in our family for generations… Of course, the motto isn't really talking about pretty stones. There are more kinds of jewels in this world than the ones that can simply be dug out of the ground, polished up a bit, and set in jewelry."

Rouge narrowed her eyes. "We're speaking metaphorical gems here?"

"Precisely. Which leads into the lesson I which to teach you," Blanc said, glancing at her daughter. "Rouge, what is the source of my queenly power?"

Rouge blinked and looked at her mother in surprise. Was that a trick question? She opened her mouth to give the answer that first came to her mind… Then paused, realizing that it probably _was_ a trick question. She frowned in thought for a moment, trying to come up with an alternative answer, but none came to mind. Finally, she gave in and spoke her first thought, which she was already certain was wrong. "The Dark Heart?"

Blanc smiled and touched the bat marking on her chest, which pulsed faintly. "No. The Dark Heart is the source of my power, yes, but not my _queenly_ power."

"There's a difference?" Asked the confused Rouge.

"Oh, indeed," Blanc said. "The Dark Heart grants me many abilities. It allows me to effortlessly wield Dark Power without jeopardizing my sanity or soul. It allows me to raise the dead, and bend the minds of millions so that they become my obsequious slaves and thralls, their every thought and wish dedicated to fulfilling my every desire. It makes me virtually immortal and invincible, the most powerful vampire alive, able to shatter entire continents with a wave of my hand and engulf the world in eternal darkness… But does any of this make me fit to rule a country?"

Rouge considered this for a moment. "No, it doesn't," she realized. "The Dark Heart may be the source and embodiment of our royal family's Demon Imperial Power, the proof of our right to rule… But it is not the sole thing upon which our reign is based. If our kingdom were ruled solely out of fear that you would use the Heart's power to annihilate anyone who defied you, it would eventually collapse on itself, like most petty dictatorships."

…

"I'm sorry, but… What's this about a Dark Heart and Demon Imperial Power?" Blaze interjected.

"Yeah, both of those sound kind of ominous," Mighty said.

"Especially if even _half_ the things she claims she can do with it are true," Espio agreed.

"The short answer is that it's an artifact that has been in my family's possession for generations. In fact, in many ways it's the source of all vampires, and many other supernatural creatures. My oldest ancestor was the one who found the Heart, became the first true vampire, and founded our line," Rouge explained. "We call the power it infuses us with 'Demon Imperial Power' because it's a cut above the Dark Power which regular vampires and other supernatural beings can utilize, and only we can use it without being destroyed, which we use to 'prove' our legitimacy to rule the creatures of the night. There's a bit more to it than that, but I'll explain when the time is right."

Blaze nodded. "Very well. And may I complement your younger self on such insight? My own reign is also based on something more than just my power over fire and the Sol Emeralds."

"I suppose it would have to be, if it's lasted as long as you've implied it has," Rouge said. "Not, however, as long as _my_ dynasty."

Blaze narrowed her eyes. "Perhaps."

…

Blanc nodded, a pleased smile on her face. "Correct. The source of my queenly power is not the Dark Heart. It rests in two simple concepts… 'wealth' and 'knowledge.'"

"Wealth and knowledge?" Asked the puzzled Rouge.

"Indeed. It shouldn't be that much of a surprise, really. Its basic economics and statecraft," Blanc explained.

"How so?" Rouge asked.

"Let us begin with wealth," Blanc said. "In this world there exist many different kinds of resources. Some are necessary for survival-food, water, blood, and so forth. Some are desired because they provide energy, like oil, Chaos, or Dark Power. Others still have no value whatsoever except for the ones we arbitrarily give them, such as money, or the jewels we so love."

"Jewels aren't arbitrary!" Rouge protested.

Blanc raised an eyebrow. "Rouge, they're really nothing more than pretty rocks that we crave for no other reason than because they're shiny and we are told by society that they are to be valued. Similarly, money is really nothing more than bits of metal or paper, and yet we believe they are important because we say they are. That does not mean they have no power, of course. Many things only have power because people believe they do. Religion. Politics. Economics. Society. Stories. Even love and family. They are things we tell ourselves are important because they give our existences meaning. Could we live without them? Certainly. But our lives would be far less interesting or fulfilling, wouldn't they?"

"But...aren't you saying those are all lies, then?" asked the confused Rouge.

"Oh, certainly. Which isn't a bad thing at all. An entertaining lie is often preferable to the mundanity of reality," Blanc said. "But that's a lesson for another day. Today, we learn about wealth and knowledge. So, as I said, there are important and valuable resources desired by many. The rarer and harder to find a resource is, the more valuable and desirable it becomes. So, if a person were to have a larger amount of that resource than everyone else, _she_ in turn would be regarded as valuable or desirable, and a great many people will be willing to exchange goods and services for that resource. Money, of course, is the simplest and most logical example: we have a great deal of it, accumulated through thousands of years of careful collecting, investments, and savings, and a great many people are willing to do whatever is asked of them if we offer enough of it. It is what keeps our staff and servants employed. It is what pays for the fine luxuries we take for granted. It is what leads to the construction of castles and cities, the formation of armies, the upkeep of nations. Loyalty, either genuine or induced by mind-control, is all well and good, but money is a far more reliable way to ensure someone's servitude. That is not, of course, to say that _everyone_ who serves you will only be after your wealth and power-I have many close friends who would follow me even if I paid them nothing-but they will be few and far between, and while you should keep them close, remember that everyone else will need incentive to remain loyal to you. This is the power of wealth, Rouge: the ability to control others through possession of a valuable commodity." She glanced at her dress. "And to be able to simply buy just about anything you might ever need. It's very easy to become extremely powerful if you can simply purchase all the incredibly rare and expensive materials you could ever desire to cast the biggest spells, build the strongest weapons, hire and train the best soldiers and workers, and so on. The smallest ring on my right hand is probably worth more than most countries could afford if they saved up for a hundred years. I could throw a trillion Rings out my window and it wouldn't even make a tiny dent in our net worth. I could buy and sell every nation on Earth a dozen times over and still have enough left to purchase real estate on a few other planets. _That_ is how rich we are."

"I see…" Rouge murmured, awed.

"And wealth can also be used as a way to keep more recalcitrant and/or important subjects, or people outside our realm, under your thumb," Blanc continued. "Nearly everyone has a price, and it's usually money. We do not rule the world by directly enforcing our will on every single person in it, which would be impossible. No, we control the people who control everyone else, and money is one of the most useful tools to ensure that control. That is not, of course, to say that greed is the only motivator, though it's the most frequent one-politicians always need money for something, and the already rich always desire more-but there are many other reasons a person might require money. Perhaps they are in poverty or debt and need a helping hand. Perhaps they have medical bills to pay for a loved one or a mortgage to pay off. Perhaps they have a charity or cause which is floundering and could use a shot in the arm. In all these situations, a little extra cash can always be useful, and the recipients will be more than happy to repay the favor...as long as you ensure they remember who gave them the help they needed and remind them that you can always cut off the cash flow should they fail to treat you with the appropriate gratitude. Always remember, Rouge, even if a person cannot be bought directly through greed, their sense of altruism can be just as big a weakness. Even a good man will need money for something, if not for themselves, then for others. A few Rings slipped in the right hands at the right time can change the course of history."

…

Everyone paused to digest this for a few moments, alarmed and uncomfortable looks on their faces.

"...That's...no way...it...it can't be that easy to control the world...can it?!" asked an incredulous Knuckles.

"Well, actually...it kind of is," Tails admitted. "It's how the rich and elite become the rich and elite and stay that way. It's how basic economics and supply and demand work. It's how organized crime can stay in power and avoid the authorities. And it's how governments can be influenced more by the one percent than by everyone else. Or have you never asked where a lot of the money to fund political campaigns and government programs comes from? Taxpayer Rings can only account for so much."

"Mother… _does_ donate a lot of money to charities and other things…and we often have very important and powerful people over for dinner…" Cream said uneasily.

"But that's...it can't be right! Blaze, you run a huge empire, and you don't do it like that!" Sonic protested.

"Yes, but remember that I don't _do_ subtle," Blaze pointed out. "The vampires are fine ruling the world from the shadows, which requires a more delicate and refined touch. I don't bother with that because I want everyone to _know_ I'm the one they all answer to." She shrugged. "Blanc's style of leadership is different from mine, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily _wrong_. Everyone has different ways to rule. And besides, it's not like I'm exactly a pauper either. I'm more than willing to exercise my wealth in ways which I believe will benefit my kingdom if I think it's necessary."

"And that's probably why Eggman's never tried anything like that," Mighty agreed. "He's too loud and egotistical."

"And stupid!" Charmy added.

"Yes, and that," Mighty agreed grudgingly, reluctant to agree on any point with the Chaotix.

"But...but it _can't_ be...I mean...there's no way any amount of money could buy me!" Sonic protested.

"It could certainly buy me," Espio said.

"Espio!" Cried a shocked Vector.

"Vector, we are so poor that homeless people point at us when we walk down the streets and laugh. If we don't get some real money soon, Charmy's going to get eaten by a loan shark. At this point, I'm more than willing to sacrifice the few morals I have if it means actually getting a paycheck," Espio said flatly.

Charmy raised a hand. "I second that! Especially the part that means I don't get eaten by a shark."

"C'mon, guys!" Vector pleaded.

"Sorry, Vector, but virtue doesn't pay the bills," Espio said bluntly.

"You say that no amount of money would ever be able to buy you… But what if the money wasn't for you, Sonic? What if it was for someone else? What if someone you cared for was badly hurt, and you needed a considerable amount of money to help them?" Rouge asked.

Sonic hesitated for moment. "I… I'd ask for Tails or Cream to spot me, I guess. I know they're good for it, and I'm not too proud to ask for help in that regard."

"Sure, if something like that ever happened, I'd be happy to help," Tails agreed.

"Me too," Cream said.

"You could rely on me as well, beloved. I have _very_ deep coffers, and if the medical technology of your world were no good, perhaps the healers of mine would suffice," Blaze offered.

"I might lend you some cash…though I'd want something in return," Shadow added.

Sonic smiled gratefully. "Thanks, guys. It's good to know you have my back."

"Which is all well and good, but would you not feel even a little indebted to them?" Rouge prompted. "Sure, they'd certainly SAY you don't need to repay them, but deep down, you'd feel like there surely had to be SOMETHING you could do to thank them for their generosity, right?"

Sonic grimaced. "Well… Yeah… I guess…"

"Which is exactly what would happen were someone else, say, me, to lend you the money," Rouge continued. "Except I'd be a bit more…insistent on repayment. Remember, Sonic, not everyone is as fortunate as you to have wealthy friends who are happy to give you anything you need with no strings attached. Some people have to look for… Other sources for aid. And in doing so, they put themselves under the power of that aid. It happens all the time, and not just with those who work for my mother. You may not like it, that doesn't change the fact that it is, in part, how the world sometimes works." Sonic clenched his fist, but had no remark. Rouge glanced at Amy. "That reminds me, don't you have a charity or two that isn't doing so well?"

Amy snarled. "Maybe, but there's no way I'm going to accept any money from _you!_ Not after everything you just said!"

Rouge shrugged. "All right, just remember that I offered. When the debt collectors are knocking down your door, you may reconsider taking the high road."

"It's a rubbish charity anyway," Shadow said flatly. "It's not like penguins _need_ sweaters."

"Maybe not, but they look so _cute_ in them!" Cream squealed. Everyone considered this for a moment, and then reluctantly conceded that she was right.

"On another note, am I the only one astonished by just how rich Rouge's mom apparently is?" Mighty asked.

Blaze shook her head in amusement. "You are not. My own kingdom is incredibly prosperous, but nothing on _that_ caliber."

"My family isn't anywhere near poor, but I doubt we could manage something like that," Cream agreed.

"Well, that's what you get for having a family that's been saving and investing money for millennia," Rouge said cheerfully.

"Exactly how old _is_ your family?" Sonic asked.

Rouge shrugged. "We've been around since before the first stories of vampires existed."

"There have been stories of vampires or vampire-like creatures since at _least_ before the rise of Babylon," Tails said.

"The Garden or the civilization?" Amy asked.

"Both," Tails said.

"Yeah, we existed for at _least_ a thousand years before that, if not more," Rouge said smugly. "We've been around since before the ancient echidnas were anything more than a bunch of brainless, fight-happy thugs."

"So, not too long ago, then?" Mighty joked.

"Hey!" Knuckles snapped.

Vector whistled. "That's quite a lineage."

"And more than enough time to build up a pretty big nest egg," Espio commented.

Rouge chuckled. "Well, just one of the many perks of immortality."

"Speaking of which…if your kind are immortal, how's the whole 'heir to the throne' thing supposed to work, exactly?" Tails asked. "Did your predecessors get bored and retire to make room for the next generation, or do you have to kill whoever's on the throne to take their place, or…?"

"I'll explain later," Rouge promised.

...

Rouge nodded thoughtfully. "And knowledge?"

"Why, I would think that would be self-evident, Rouge," Blanc said. "One cannot do _anything_ in this world without knowing how to do it, after all. That is what schools are for, and tutors, and lessons. To teach a person the things she needs to advance in the world, to excel at her chosen profession. An alchemist cannot turn lead into gold without knowing some basic chemistry. A programmer cannot create a new operating system without knowing how to code. A physicist can't make a grand unified theory without a grasp of how the universe works. An assassin can't kill someone without knowing all the possible ways to end someone's life. An accountant can't handle people's money without being good with numbers. A Sorcerer cannot create a great work without knowing how to cast a basic levitation spell. And a Queen cannot rule her kingdom without knowing everything there is to know about it. Every town and village and city and settlement. Every tribe and culture and race and species and sect. The way they interact with each other, for better or for worse. How the geography works, and what place is important historically or has some magical relevance, who lives where, who used to live there, what can grow there, and what can't. Its history and how it shapes the nation as it is today. What people want, when they want it, what they eat, what they worship, who they love, who they hate. What projects need approval, and what don't. The annual budget and the best way to keep from going over it while at the same time keeping your coffers full without overtaxing the citizens. How best to play the various petty squabbling nobles against each other by exploiting age-old grudges and feuds absolutely nobody cares about except for those involved to get the result which is most ideal for yourself and for your kingdom. More than anything else, a kingdom is made up by its people, and a good ruler must know what motivates and drives them to ensure they can be made to work together for the greater good… Whether they like it or not. Manipulation is an indispensable tool for any leader's skillset, and the first step to manipulating someone is to _know_ them inside and out. This applies on both an individual and national or even global scale."

"Which…is why you do your best to know who everyone in Fangsylvania is, so you know the best way to control them," Rouge realized.

…

"Gee, that isn't even the slightest bit creepy or sinister," Charmy snarked.

"The Imperials don't seem to care too much that Nicole's constantly watching them," Tails pointed out.

"Yes, but they practically worship that computer as a God," Espio countered.

The Fox shrugged. "Maybe they feel the same way about Blanc in Fangsylvania?"

"Some do, others don't. Mother's ways of learning things about people aren't as obvious as cameras everywhere, and by this point everyone's pretty much resigned themselves to the fact that she somehow knows everything about them before they even meet her," Rouge said. "It adds to her mystique. They chalk it up to just another one of her many powers, and see it as another reason to fear and/or revere her."

"Is it?" Cream asked.

"Partially. Also, she has spies everywhere," Rouge said.

"Yeah, sorry, but I'm not entirely convinced that your mother's not an evil overlord," Sonic deadpanned.

" _I_ have spies everywhere and you don't think _I'm_ an evil overlord," Blaze said.

"You do?" Cream asked in surprise.

"Of course she does," Amy sneered.

"Well, yes. How else am I supposed to obtain accurate knowledge of what's happening throughout my realm and beyond?" Blaze asked.

Sonic faltered. "Well, that's… I… Oh, never mind."

…

Blanc nodded. "Indeed. Which isn't to say it's not borne partially from compassion, or at least to give the _appearance_ of compassion, which in many ways is just as important—after all, in many ways, we are the mothers of the nation, and a true mother should know and love their children—but that doesn't mean it's not still a useful way to better understand what's going on in your nation and the best way to steer it in the way you choose. As horrible as this may sound, always keep in mind that a good chunk of politics _requires_ manipulating everyone around you to a certain extent, otherwise you'd _never_ be able to get anything done, and everyone else will just walk all over you to get what they want."

"Plus, we're vampires, we kind of do it instinctively," Rouge said.

Blanc chuckled. "Quite. Anyway, while it's important you do your best to learn everything you can about your subjects, most of it will probably never be needed except on a more general level. Remember, there are millions of them and one of you, so trying to control each and every single one of them directly is completely unfeasible. For the most part they're fine with what they have, and don't really care so much about what's going on in the wider world so long as it doesn't adversely affect them, so will go along with whatever you tell them to do if you coach it in terms that can convince them it's worth their while, which is still manipulation, but in a more general, everyday sense, and is no different from how _any_ politician controls their constituents. Even so, it's better to have that knowledge than _not_ to have it. You never know when it might come in handy. For instance, while you'll be able to generally control people through proper use of propaganda, public displays, decrees and laws, big shows of power and other more subtle channels, there will always be certain individuals you may need to… _lean_ on a little more heavily to get the results you want. And your knowledge of the people around you will help you to know how best to make these certain individuals do what you want them to."

"By using wealth," Rouge said, recalling the previous lesson.

"A good thought, but that's not always the case," Blanc said.

Rouge blinked. "What? But I thought-"

"Money is _usually_ the best way to control someone, but it's not always the only or best way," Blanc said. "And that is where knowledge comes in. Like I said, to manipulate someone, you need to know them inside and out. Almost everyone in this world has a 'lever' which can be used to control them, and with proper knowledge and understanding of that individual you can figure out what it is. For the general populace, that lever is something like national pride, or faith, or lower taxes, or promises of better housing and prosperity and the like, something that appeals to the masses. On a more individual level, however, it's often something else. Something like-"

"A loved one?" Rouge intuited. "Is that why we sometimes host the children of other nobles and lesser rulers for a while?"

Blanc paused, then gave Rouge a serious look. "Yes. A family member or loved one is often a useful lever. However, Rouge, I _strongly_ urge you not to rely on it too much. It's all well and good to hold noble offspring 'hostage' for a time as a show of good faith—there's precedent for that sort of thing all around the world, it's been going on for thousands of years to ensure peace between neighbors, and it's not like they're in any _real_ danger—but if you start threatening people's families to make them do what you want, you're no different from a common thug or despot. We're vampires. We're _better_ than that, or at least we like to think we are. I would recommend you only do something like that as a last resort. You don't want people constantly fearing that you'll take their families from them, after all."

…

"Okay, I guess that's a few points in the 'Not an Evil Overlord' column," Sonic said grudgingly.

"All this talk of manipulation is awful. Is that really the way to go about running a country?" Cream asked uncomfortably.

"To be fair, a lot of what she's saying is how politics _work,"_ Tails said. "She's just a bit more into it—and honest—than most politicians are about their tendency to manipulate everyone around them."

Blaze nodded. "As I've said before, this is not the method in which I rule my domain. While I _do_ try to know as much about those around me as I can, I'm not very good at being subtle—although I have people who are better at it and do it for me-I do my best to be blunt and honest with everyone I deal with, which many of those under me find refreshing compared to other rulers, who would do nothing but go around and around in circles without saying anything of value." She shrugged. "On the other hand, this could also be considered a kind of manipulation, since it makes them like me and be more receptive to doing what I want."

"A case could be made that, on some level, all forms of social interaction are a kind of manipulation," Tails agreed.

"I don't buy that," Sonic argued.

"Would you say, then, that you don't try to manipulate everyone around you?" Shadow asked.

"Of course not!" Sonic snorted.

"You just proved his point," Tails said.

Sonic blinked. "Huh?"

"You said you don't try to manipulate everyone around you. In doing so, you're trying to convince everyone to think of you in a specific way. That's manipulation, really," Tails said.

Sonic was dumbstruck. "But…but I wasn't trying to…I didn't _mean-"_

"Not all manipulation is conscious, beloved. Pretty much everyone does it without thinking about it. All the time," Blaze said. Sonic blanched at this.

"But that's terrible!" said a shocked Cream.

Shadow shrugged. "It's just how it is. And to an extent, people _want_ to be manipulated, or why else would they always fall for hucksters and liars or keep voting for the wrong people to lead them? Like Rouge's mother said, an entertaining lie is often more appealing than the more mundane reality."

The rabbit grimaced, but did not have a counter for this. "My optimistic outlook on the world seems to be dying the more stories I hear."

"GOOD," Omega said callously.

"Hey, is that why Knuckles always falls for everything?" Vector wondered.

"No, I'm pretty sure he's just stupid," Mighty said. The others nodded in agreement.

"Hey!" Knuckles exclaimed.

"Most of this stuff is going over my head. Do we really need to discuss it?" Charmy complained.

"I admit it's a bit much, but it's important for you to understand why I am the way I am and how I got into my current professions," Rouge explained.

"Continue," Silver urged.

…

Rouge nodded in understanding. "Okay, save threatening people as a last resort. What would you suggest, then?"

Blanc shrugged. "Any number of things, really. Most of the time it's best to be subtle. Appeal to their vanity, convince them that the thing you want to them to do was their own idea. If they are of a more generous and altruistic bent, tell them it will help people. You should also never discount the power of sex appeal."

Rouge pouted. "Which I currently lack."

"Your sheer cuteness is a good placeholder until your body develops some more. I've seen the sorts of things you can get when you just look at people with those big, beautiful blue eyes of yours, and I am no exception to your charms," Blanc chuckled. "Anyway, both sex appeal and cuteness are very useful ways to get what you want. It's astonishing the amount of people who will crumble and give you what you want if you smile at them the right way or flash a little leg. You don't even need to _promise_ anything, the tantalizing _possibility_ of getting somewhere is more than enough to bend most red-blooded males –and many females—to your will." She glanced sharply at Rouge. "Speaking of which, you are not to flash any leg until you actually have legs worth flashing, of course. You don't want to attract the…wrong kind of attention."

…

Everyone glanced at Cream. "She _is_ very cute," Amy said thoughtfully. "I can see where Blanc's coming from."

"Yeah, she is," Charmy said dreamily.

"It's a good thing she's too nice to use it to make people do what she wants…well, not too often, anyway," Sonic joked.

"She's probably gonna be a real looker like her mom when she grows up, too," Vector said fondly.

"And even then, she'll probably be too nice to take advantage of it in the same way Rouge or her mother would," Espio agreed. "Well, intentionally, anyway."

"I suppose I should be offended, but that's pretty much right," Rouge admitted.

"I certainly hope so," Cream said. "And maybe it means I'll finally understand all these things everyone else's dancing around whenever I'm in earshot. Am I right in guessing that 'attracting the wrong kind of attention' is one of them?"

"Yep," Shadow said.

Cream sighed. "Of course it is."

…

"What you must remember, however," Blanc continued. "Is that not every method of manipulation you possess will work on everyone you come across. That's why it is imperative you have adequate knowledge of that person and what will or will not work on them before you attempt to control them. That's why I consider knowledge to be one of the two pillars which support my reign instead of manipulation. Manipulation is an incredibly useful tool, but if you stake absolutely everything on it, not only will it make people wary of trusting you, there's a good chance everything will collapse around you if you find yourself in a situation you _can't_ work around. It is better to be regarded as a chessmaster than simply a manipulative bitch."

"I'm not very good at chess," Rouge complained.

"You can be taught. Anyway, there is one other kind of lever of control I've yet to mention, one which makes knowledge of the person you're trying to manipulate even more important," Blanc continued.

Rouge perked up at this. "Oh?"

"For most people, you can use subtlety to control them. For others, you can use money. And for those for which neither will work… There are secrets," Blanc said.

Rouge blinked. "Secrets?"

"Many people— _especially_ the wealthy and powerful, whom you will probably be working your hardest to keep under your thumb- have a secret. Something they cannot, _will not_ , allow anyone to know under any circumstances," Blanc explained. "A certain fetish or proclivity which is highly frowned upon. A crime they committed in their past or are continuing to commit now. An infidelity. A whole second family they keep separate from their first one. A crime committed by a loved one they've done their best to cover up. Hidden shames and sins which, if they were to ever see the light of day, would ruin their careers and quite likely their lives. And if you were to know these secrets, these things they cannot allow anyone else to know…"

"Then they will be willing to do absolutely anything you ask to make sure you never tell anyone else," Rouge realized.

"Correct," Blanc said with a smile.

"Isn't that blackmail?" Rouge asked.

Blanc laughed. "Darling, of _course_ it's blackmail. After everything else I've just told you, is it really that big a deal?"

"I suppose not," Rouge conceded.

…

"Aaaand there's some more points _back_ in the Evil Overlord column," Sonic muttered.

"Blaze, you don't-" Vector started.

" _I_ don't, no," Blaze said. After a pause, she admitted, "I do, however, have people who _do,_ who make it their business to learn anything useful regarding those who might be either a threat or an asset to my kingdom. I largely turn a blind eye towards them so that I can retain my image and maintain plausible deniability should they ever be caught doing something they shouldn't."

"Aha!" Amy crowed triumphantly. "You see, Sonic? She IS evil, to do something like that!"

"Actually, Amy, most governments handle the messier side of running a country that way," Tails informed the pink hedgehog.

Amy blinked in surprise. "They do?"

"Yes, you don't think the President of the United Federation knows—or _wants_ to know-even _half_ of what GUN is doing behind his back, do you?" Shadow said. "Despite what the conspiracy theorists say, the entire government is not, in fact, out to get you. Just parts of it."

"…That doesn't exactly make me feel reassured," Espio said.

"It wasn't supposed to," Shadow said.

"I don't understand. What secret could possibly be so bad that it would ruin your life if anyone found out about it?" Asked a confused Cream.

"Your family doesn't have any dirty secrets?" Espio asked. "I mean, you _are_ pretty rich…"

"Yeah, and rich people usually have tons of skeletons in their closets," Mighty said.

"No! Nothing bad!" Cream protested. "And why would we have skeletons in our closets outside of Halloween, anyway?"

"That's not what that…oh, never mind," Tails said.

"Maybe you do and your mom just hasn't told you because you're not old enough?" Amy suggested.

Cream shook her head angrily, ears flopping about. "No, she…she wouldn't do that!...would she?"

"Well, considering _we're_ keeping you from knowing things because you're not old enough, I don't see why not," Shadow said.

Cream opened her mouth…then paused, frowning. "…Mommy doesn't like me talking about Daddy when there are other people around. I thought it was because she was embarrassed or something or because she usually doesn't like to talk about him, but…given who he is, then…maybe she…" Her face paled. "Oh. Oh my. That _would_ count, wouldn't it?"

The others exchanged concerned looks. "Cream, exactly who _is_ your father?" Blaze asked in concern.

Cream started to speak again, hesitated, and shook her head. "I…I think I'll wait until it's my turn. This is Rouge's story, anyway."

Rouge nodded in gratitude. "Thank you, Cream. Anyway…"

…

"All right, I can see how all that would be useful in ruling the kingdom… But what if something happens that CAN'T be solved by throwing money or blackmailing it?" Rouge asked.

"Like a natural disaster? Well, that's pretty easy, just pour money into disaster relief, use your knowledge to choose the right people to clean up the mess and rebuild-" Blanc started.

"I was referring more to supernatural beings," Rouge said.

Blanc raised an eyebrow. "Technically, darling, _we_ are supernatural beings."

"More supernatural than us, then. The kind that don't live in or respect civilization as we know it, come from other dimensions, desire to destroy us and possibly devour our souls…?" Rouge prompted.

Blanc laughed in surprise. "Oh, them? Rouge, if anything, they're _easier_ to deal with than the travails of bureaucracy."

Rouge blinked. "How so?"

Blanc shrugged. "All things like that can do is kill you and consume your soul. Which, after spending week after week rejecting moronic bill after moronic bill, might actually be _welcome._ The thing you must remember, Rouge, is that the entities you mention are all bound by specific rules which govern their behavior and determine what they can or cannot do, in contrast with mortals—or 'lesser' supernatural beings like ourselves- who have a lot more leeway. It's a necessary drawback of the phenomenal cosmic powers they possess. It's why genies must grant wishes to whomever rubs their lamp or ring or other object, why demons _have_ to make at least a show of honoring any deal you make with them instead of immediately double-crossing you and taking your soul, why the Fae can be held back and bound by so many seemingly silly and harmless commonplace objects, and why the Great Old Ones and those like them can't just wake up or break out or enter our reality whenever they wish but can only do it when the circumstances are exactly right; and the stronger they are, the more complex and rare those circumstances are. If you know the rules governing these mighty beings, then you can manipulate them to your advantage to make sure they will not be a threat to you. Over the millennia, our lineage has collected a great deal of information on how to handle such creatures. We have hundreds of prewritten contracts written by the finest legal minds that have ever lived to make sure we can make any wish or deal we desire without any loophole that could potentially screw us over. Should I ever find myself in a Fae realm, I know all the rules about how things work there, what to avoid, what to seek out, and the True Names of a number of extremely powerful fairies who would be beholden to show me the way out where I to call upon them. If I were to die and go to Hell, I know twelve dozen different routes of escape to more welcoming planes, as well as the names of over a hundred demons whose loyalty we have bought in one way or another who would come to my assistance if summoned, including a number of Archdemons and Dukes of Hell. And if, by some chance, I were to wind up in _Heaven,_ I know ways of commanding several of the angels there, who are not really as different from their devilish kin as they might wish. I know the coordinates of several other dimensions, what lives there, and how to get back to our world from them. I know the locations of almost every sealed evil or extradimensional horror that can access our reality, what is necessary to free them, and what can be done to banish them back. Additionally, I know the identities of several of the high-ranking cultists who worship such horrors—or demons—and their addresses should they need to be…dealt with. Heck, I even know all the thousand names and faces of Nyarlyathotep, including his true, secret name which only he knows, or so he believes!"

Rouge's eyes widened in amazement. "That's… A lot of information."

"We've had a long time to gather it," Blanc said.

"How the heck am I supposed to remember all that?!" Rouge demanded.

"Your memory retention and capacity will increase with age," Blanc assured her. "Also, we've made sure to write everything down somewhere for the sake of redundancy. And if you can't remember it or find it anywhere, you can just wake up one of the Elders, they'll know it."

Rouge considered this for a moment. "Okay, that's how they can be beaten with knowledge, but what about wealth?"

Blanc shrugged. "Not all of the information on how to properly deal with these beings is easy to come by. Incredibly rare tomes, hard-to-find ingredients and components, scholars of Eldritch lore only willing to part with their hard-earned knowledge for proper compensation…being rich might not necessarily be able to control beings like those, but it helps get you the tools you need to do it. And if all else fails, I suppose you could just recruit some heroes to take care of it should a problem arise, and if _they_ fail you can still fall back on the power of the Dark Heart, because despite the importance I've placed upon wealth and knowledge, ultimately they might not always be able to solve everything, and you must be willing to get down and dirty and take care of things yourself when necessary. Of course, I would recommend using it only if absolutely necessary, because while it's incredibly powerful, relying too heavily on using the Demon Imperial Power on beings like those might attract attention from…the entity it draws its strength from, and it might not be happy about it, much like a dog may eventually grow tired of a flea biting it and shake it off."

Rouge grimaced. She did not like to think of herself as a flea. Seeing her expression, Blanc quietly said, "You must always remember, Rouge, that for all our power, no matter how superior we may seem compared to other beings, there will _always_ be things out there far stronger than us. And while the information we've collected over the ages will help to repel such beings, that doesn't mean they can't still destroy you if you aren't very, _very_ careful. It can only take one slip-up and it's the end of the world, and that can go for politics as well as dealing with almighty supernatural beings."

…

"Very perceptive. That is something I must remind myself every day," Blaze said.

"THERE-IS-ALWAYS-A-BIGGER-FISH," Omega agreed.

"Fish?" Big asked, glancing up from the punch bowl.

"No, Big, not real fish," Sonic said. Big immediately lost interest and resumed fishing.

"I'm not sure what impresses me more, the fact that your mom knows so much stuff- and by definition, you will one day too- or that in spite of it all, she's _still_ worried it might not always be enough," Vector commented.

"I'm more terrified myself. I had no idea there were so many things out there that could so easily do us harm," Espio said.

"Ignorance is bliss, I guess," Amy said.

"Not really. While it allows people to live their lives more easily if they have absolutely no idea just how close they are to total annihilation every single day, the downside is that when things like this crop up, they have absolutely no idea whatsoever how to handle it," Shadow said.

Tails nodded in understanding. "Ignorance can be a double-edged sword. Then again, so can knowledge, in this instance."

"She mentioned that the Dark Heart draws its power from… Something. What's that about?" Mighty asked.

"Is it anyone I need to beat up?" Sonic asked a little too eagerly.

"I'll explain later. We probably digressed enough already," Rouge said. She paused, and then added, "Plus, Sonic, you've already beaten him up once, you don't need to do it again."

Sonic blinked. "Huh? I have?"

"I'll explain later," Rouge repeated.

"One last digression, actually. Blanc mentioned some guy called Nyarlyathotep. This is the third time we've heard that name," Espio said. "First Mighty fought him, then those Gizomochao cultists mentioned him, and now your mom knows about him. Who is he?"

"That's a question I'd like to know the answer to myself, actually," Mighty said.

"You fought him but you don't know who he is?" Knuckles asked.

Mighty shrugged. "All I really know about the guy is he's some sort of evil Eldritch Abomination thing who was trying to wake up ANOTHER evil Eldritch Abomination thing, and that's about it. I asked Illumina about it before I woke up, and she said there are some things I'm better off not knowing, things that give even _her_ nightmares."

"I'm aware of this entity. He has visited my realm a number of times in the past, although I've never had the misfortune to encounter him directly," Blaze said. She smirked. "Or rather, he never had the misfortune of encountering _me_."

"I wouldn't be so cocky around him. Nyarlyathotep is seriously bad news," Rouge said warningly.

"I beat him," Mighty said. He paused. "Well, okay, I had the help from like a ton of other dreaming heroes, but still."

"I think that kind of proves the point," Amy said.

"There exists a pantheon of cosmic horrors called the 'Outer Gods,'" Shadow began.

"Why are they called that?" Cream asked.

"Because they exist completely outside of reality as we know it, and are far more powerful than pretty much any supernatural entity we've ever encountered," Shadow said. "For example, remember how Mighty beat Cthulhu, or rather, his dreaming self?"

"Yes," Mighty said. "I was there."

"Well, Cthulhu's the _High Priest_ of the Outer Gods," Shadow said.

It took a moment to digest this. "…Wait, the Outer Gods are so strong they've got _another_ god acting as High Priest?!" asked an incredulous Vector.

"WELL, THAT-DEPENDS-ON-YOUR-DEFINITION-OF-'GOD.' CTHULHU-HAS-WORSHIPPERS-AND-A-CULT-OF-HIS-OWN, BUT-THEN-AGAIN-SO-DO-MANY-OTHER-POWERFUL-ENTITIES-BOTH-WITHIN-AND-WITHOUT-OUR-UNIVERSE, WHETHER-OR-NOT-THEY-ARE-DESERVING-OF-THE-TITLE. BLAZE-SAID-SHE-HAD-WORSHIPPERS, BUT-ALSO-ADMITTED-SHE-ISN'T _-QUITE_ -A-GOD," Omega said, nodding at the feline.

"I'm definitely not quite mortal, but…divine?" Blaze shrugged. "Depends on who you ask."

"But for the sake of simplicity, yes, we'll say that the Outer Gods are so strong their High Priest is a weaker god," Shadow said.

"…Holy crap," Vector said, visibly spooked.

"I _reeeeaally_ hope they aren't going to get back at me for messing with their High Priest," Mighty said with a nervous gulp.

"If they haven't now, they probably never will. They don't care about things like that the same way we do," Shadow said. He paused, and then admitted, "Then again, they also see time differently than us, so it's possible that retribution will occur, but not for a very long time."

"That is not even remotely reassuring," Mighty said anxiously.

"I think it might be in our best interests to avoid drawing attention from such beings. Sonic, you might want to dial down on beating up Eldritch Abominations for the foreseeable future," Espio said.

"I will make no such promise," Sonic said firmly.

"Are they stronger than the Ancient Walkers?" Knuckles asked.

"I don't know, actually," Shadow admitted. "There's more information and records on the Outer Gods than there are on the Walkers. Perhaps that means the Walkers are stronger and even more 'outer,' or maybe that they're just more reclusive. Regardless, the Walkers are, according to Tikal, not malicious and have no interest in destroying worlds or interfering in the affairs of lesser beings unless it suits their inscrutable desires. The same cannot, however, be said of the Outer Gods. They are, at best, jerkish or apathetic. At worst…" He meaningfully did not finish the sentence.

"Nyarlyathotep is their servant, a lesser horror who is capable of existing in our reality without being summoned, able to travel planes and dimensions at will. He is a trickster, a shapeshifter, a fiend who revels in chaos and misery and delights in bringing ruin to all he encounters," Rouge said. "While the Outer Gods are largely incomprehensible, his malice is far more defined…and petty. If the Outer gods are to us as we are to ants, Nyarlyathotep's that obnoxious kid who loves frying anthills with a magnifying glass."

"He's also supposed to be the embodiment of the 'soul' of the Outer Gods, whatever the heck that means," Shadow added.

"His job is… You know how Galactus always has a herald who he sends out to find new planets for him to eat?" Rouge asked. "That's essentially Nyarlyathotep's job, when he isn't causing trouble for the hell of it. His task is to prepare worlds and universes for the coming of his masters, often by awakening and freeing lesser abominations, which usually makes it easier for the Outer Gods to cross over due to all the chaos and weakening of the fabric of reality. Whenever a cult arises or some plan is set into motion to release or summon such creatures, it's a sure bet that Nyarlyathotep in one of his many guises is probably responsible."

"So…does that mean _Eggman_ is one of this guy's forms, or…" Vector asked.

"Unlikely. It's more probable Nyarlyathotep's the one who keeps putting the idea into Eggman's head that it would be a _brilliant_ idea to try to free and take control of an ancient horror and that it _totally_ won't backfire this time," Shadow said. "He's probably not even aware of it."

"….Huh. You know, that actually explains really well why he doesn't seem to have any form of pattern recognition…" Sonic murmured.

"Is it weird that I'm now actually feeling kind of sorry for him?" Charmy asked.

"I'm not," Espio said flatly.

"So yeah, that's who Nyarlyathotep is," Rouge said.

"Yes, that fits with most of what I have heard about him. Thank you, Rouge," Blaze said.

"Now I'm even more afraid of retribution," Mighty said timidly.

"If anything, you should be proud of yourself for beating him! Doesn't sound like he's an easy guy to handle!" Sonic said.

Mighty perked up at this. "Well, yeah, when you put it like _that..._ I guess I _should_ be pretty pleased for taking down someone that bad. Guess that helps put me more on your level, right, Sonic?"

Sonic laughed and clapped his friend on the back. "Yeah, but remember you've got a long way to go before you've caught up to me!"

"I'll work at it," Mighty assured the hedgehog. "I've been out of the game and feeling sorry for myself for too long. No more fuck-ups. The next time something big goes down, you can be sure I'll be right there helping!"

"That's the spirit!" Sonic said encouragingly, a wide grin on his face.

"Back to Nyarlyathotep...I understand why Rouge might know about this guy, but how did you know who he was, Shadow?" Tails asked.

"The Professor did some research on him while studying various ancient legends and prophecies of destroyed civilizations, believing that Nyarlyathotep was a common thread linking them all together," Shadow explained. "Also, we have a few files on him back at GUN."

"Do you think he's going to be behind that 'Nightmare Green' thing you mentioned?" Cream asked.

Shadow hesitated for moment. "It's… Possible, yes."

"I don't suppose you feel like _sharing_ what this thing is?" Amy asked.

"Yeah, like Tails said, ignorance is a double-edged sword," Knuckles said.

"Yes, but so is knowledge," Shadow said darkly. "Ask all you want, but until you get proper clearance, I'm not talking."

"Please, Mister Shadow? Just a little hint?" Cream asked, giving the black hedgehog her biggest bunny-rabbit look. (Like a puppy-dog look, only cuter.)

Shadow faltered for a moment, then sighed and said, "Silence will fall. And that's all you get."

There was a sharp inhalation of breath from Tails. "Does that mean something to you, Tails?" Blaze asked.

"It…it might. I can think of at least two possibilities, neither of them good," Tails murmured, an alarmed look on his face.

"And what _are_ those possibilities?" Espio asked.

"I'd…rather not say, in case I'm wrong…" Tails said uneasily.

"Well… Maybe Silver could-" Charmy started.

"No," Silver said flatly. They waited for clarification. He didn't say anything else.

"Well, I guess that's the end of that," Sonic grumbled.

"Let's resume my story, shall we? We're almost at the good part," Rouge said.

" _Finally,_ " Amy grumbled. Rouge scowled at her, and then continued.

…

"Now, a test, to see how well you've learned what I've told you. Let us say, hypothetically speaking, that the Werewolf Duke were planning a rebellion-" Blanc began.

"That's hypothetical?" Rouge asked with a raised eyebrow.

Blanc chuckled. "Point. Okay, let us say, hypothetically speaking, that the Werewolf Duke were planning a rebellion and the coward had actually worked up the courage and brains to go through with it. Using wealth and knowledge, how can you prevent a civil war from breaking out without requiring any direct intervention or use of Demon Imperial Power to eviscerate that flea-bitten mongrel where he stands?"

Rouge considered this for a moment. "Well, the first thing that comes to mind is killing him. Cut off the head, the snake dies. If I can't kill him myself, I can arrange an 'accident.' Hire an assassin, or maybe bribe a frustrated member of his household staff or even a family member to do the deed." She frowned. "Of course, that might not actually resolve anything. After all, sometimes the snake is a hydra, so cutting off the head would just make things worse. If he were to die, someone else would become the Duke of Werewolves, and there's no guarantee that he would be as easy to read or manipulate as the current one."

Blanc nodded. "Very astute. What other course of action would you try, then?"

Rouge considered for a moment. "Wars and rebellions are rarely started or caused by a single person. There's lots of other factors involved, all blending together and boiling up until an eventual violent release. So, I need to find a way to lower the pressure, mitigate those factors to prevent war, or at the very least, push it further down the line. The Duke can only foster rebellion if he's able to get funding and support from his people and other like-minded individuals. Cut off that funding, make his people no longer _want_ to go to war, and he's powerless."

"Very good. And how would you go about doing that?" Blanc asked.

"I'm assuming that I can't bribe or blackmail the Duke into giving up in this scenario—too easy- but that doesn't mean I can't do the same for his supporters," Rouge said. "My spy network and awareness of my kingdom would help me to locate those hidden backers, figure out their weaknesses, and learn what I can do to convince them to withdraw their support from the Duke. As for his people… I need to understand what arguments and propaganda he's using to convince them that going to war would be a good thing and counter it, either by using propaganda of my own to slander the Duke, make it clear how if they rise against me they'll probably all die horribly, or…pass legislation and divert funding to correct whatever problems the Duke is blaming me for, convince them I'm a ruler who cares about their needs. That sort of thing."

Blanc nodded in approval. "Good, good. Now… What would you do if it turned out the Duke had obtained some incredibly powerful artifact or weapon that might have a chance of matching the Dark Heart's power, or was in cahoots with a supernatural entity with a grudge against you?"

Rouge thought about this for a moment, then laughed. "Seriously? That would just make things even easier! Werewolves are always going on about how they're such proud, strong, honorable warriors who don't need to cheat by using magic or making pacts with dark forces! All I have to do is tell his subjects what he's up to, and they'll do my dirty work for me and tear him apart themselves."

"And if he uses his increased powers to lash out at them?" Blanc asked.

"That'll just make them even angrier, and not only give me an excuse to send in my forces to take the Duke out, but make the werewolves more amenable to following a leader more loyal to me in the future," Rouge said. "And if he _still_ manages to overpower them, and there's no other option…then I can take to the field myself, using the Dark Heart as a weapon of last resort."

Blanc nodded, smiling proudly. "Excellent. You seem to be getting a good handle on how to think like a clever monarch."

"So my answers were right, then?" Rouge asked eagerly.

Blanc shrugged. "There's rarely just one answer for a problem such as this, Rouge. You hit on several I would have thought of myself, but did not think of several other possibilities. That's fine, though. You're still young, and have time to learn how to see all the angles and options available to you in any given situation." She glanced at her daughter. "Which is why, after today, you're going to begin your intermediate level of lessons and training. I believe you have demonstrated sufficiently that there is no more you can learn with your current curriculum."

Rouge's face lit up at this. _One more step towards a crown of my own!_ She thought ecstatically.

"Ah, I believe we have arrived," Blanc said as they reached the bottom of the staircase.

Rouge blinked in surprise, then frowned in suspicion and glanced back up the stairwell. How odd, that the staircase had been _just_ long enough to receive this lesson in full… "Mother, did you do something to the stairway to make sure we wouldn't reach the bottom until we finished this lesson?"

Blanc smiled enigmatically. "Perhaps. Or perhaps it is simply a very long stairwell. Come."

Rouge followed her mother out of the stairway and into a small antechamber with a surprisingly simple wooden door at the other end with a gargoyle face placed above it, eyes shut. "This is it?" Rouge asked in surprise. "I was expecting something… Fancier. And more secure."

"It is rather dull, isn't it?" Blanc agreed. "Unfortunately, the monarch who commissioned the creation of this vault had somewhat simpler tastes then you or I, and trying to replace it is far more trouble than it's worth. As for secure… It may not look like much, but trust me when I say that not even the end of the world or the destruction of this Castle down to the very last brick would affect this door or the chamber behind it, and if anyone who is not of the Royal blood attempts to open the door, they will be destroyed on the spot."

Rouge glanced up at the gargoyle, sensing a watchful presence from it despite its closed eyes. There _was_ powerful magic at work here, now that she knew to look for it. "I see."

Blanc stepped aside and gestured at the door. "Go ahead. Open it. Our family's greatest treasures lie within."

Rouge's eyes lit up. Mind racing with fantasies of the sorts of wonders in the room beyond—piles of gold and silver heaped to the ceiling, glittering jewels of every size and shape and color-Rouge reached for the doorknob…

And hesitated, noticing the cryptic smile on her mother's face. Was this another test?

A silly question. Of course it was. Her mother wouldn't have spent the whole trip down here lecturing her on the importance of wealth and knowledge if she were just going to show off the family's riches, right?

Wealth and knowledge…wait a minute…

Rouge took a step back and turned to face her mother. "There's nothing in there, is there?"

Blanc shook her head. "On the contrary. There's quite a lot in there. Our family's greatest treasures."

Rouge narrowed her eyes. "You said 'treasures.' Not wealth or riches or money or anything like that. 'Treasures.' You were very specific about word usage. And there are a lot of things that could be considered 'treasures.' Let me try that again… There's nothing of any actual _monetary_ value in there, is there?"

"Again, on the contrary," Blanc said. "If we were to ever sell what's in there, I'm certain we could make quite a pretty penny from it… Not that we ever would, of course. But that's not what you're asking me. You're asking me if there are any piles of gold and silver heaped to the ceiling or glittering jewels of every size and shape and color, and the answer to _that_ is no."

Rouge's eyes widened in astonishment. "But… Then where is it?!"

Blanc chuckled and spread her hands. "Why, in banks, of course. And tied up in stocks. It's safely invested and stored away, like any smart person would do. Oh, that's not to say we don't have any treasure rooms lying around where we keep objects of specific significance—pragmatic though we are with our cash, that doesn't mean we can't be vain, we're _vampires_ after all-but this isn't one of them."

"But… Then what's in there?" Rouge asked in confusion. "Rare tomes? Powerful magical artifacts?"

Blanc shook her head. "No, all of our books are either in the Castle libraries or in more secure storehouses elsewhere where I don't have to worry about someone accidentally stumbling upon and reading a forbidden text that could end the world. Same for the more dangerous artifacts. What sense would it make to keep them all in the castle, where someone might be able to snatch them up or set them off all at once in the incredibly unlikely event that we were invaded or a thief got in? After all, it's one thing to live near a nuclear reactor, but another to live _inside_ it!"

Rouge frowned as she considered this. "Okay, I guess that makes sense… But… If you rule out money, and books, and artifacts and the like… What could be left?"

"See for yourself," Blanc said, the smile on her face growing wider.

Rouge glared at her mother in annoyance, and then reluctantly opened the door, revealing…

The bat blinked. "I'm aware that we walked _down_ a long way to get here, but are we actually at the very top of the Castle?"

"No, dear, whatever would give you that idea?" Blanc asked in amusement.

"Because I suddenly feel like I've walked into someone's attic," a confused Rouge said as she and her mother entered the room.

The analogy wasn't one hundred percent accurate—the space they were in was much larger, neater, and well-lit than the average person's attic—but it still had a bit of the feel of one given that most of the things in the chamber were, well…not _junk_ exactly, but the sort of old and worn things people lock away when they're no longer needed and eventually forget about. There were shelves and shelves of knickknacks, books, old toys, and trinkets. Old paintings and statues of bats resembling Rouge and her mother were scattered about, leaning on top of each other or hanging from the walls. Very old but exquisite and extremely ornate and beautiful dresses and suits in fashions that had gone out of style centuries if not millennia ago hung on mannequins or clothes racks. Antique furniture was organized in matching sets, and there were a sizable number of thrones and rocking chairs. There were slightly faded tapestries and blankets and curtains draped over larger objects that didn't seem to be there for any reason other than to have something draped over them. There were rows upon rows of commemorative plates, some of which had matching silverware. There were so many old dressers and armoires and cabinets that they had been stacked into a vast towering edifice reaching the ceiling, an uber-cabinet, if you would. Strange contraptions resembling flying machines or submarines torn from the pages of da Vinci's notebooks dangled from the ceiling next to Chandeliers of varying styles, as well as a stuffed alligator with big goofy vampire fangs and a long cape.

…

"Okay, that's not what I expected," said the perplexed Vector.

"I did," Blaze said, intrigued. "I think I see where this is going."

"Well, don't spoil it for anyone else, okay?" Rouge asked.

…

Blanc sighed in delight, twirling about to take everything in. "Ah, it's been far too long since I was last down here, Rouge. Isn't it wonderful?"

"What… What _is_ all this?" Asked the confused Princess. "It's… It's all… _stuff!_ "

Blanc pouted. " _Stuff?_ That's rather rude, don't you think? Why, you might as well just call _this_ old thing a faded piece of cloth, or _this_ nothing more than a ratty old child's toy, then!" Blanc said, holding up a tattered blue blanket dotted with white dots to resemble the night sky in one hand and a fat old bat doll with bite marks in places and stuffing leaking out of it in the other.

Rouge gasped. "Those… Those are…!"

"Your favorite blanket when you were much younger? And your dear old companion, Fangface? Good to see you haven't forgotten them," Blanc said as she handed the blanket and stuffed animal to Rouge, who rubbed her face in them, luxuriating in their familiar scent and texture.

"It's been so long since I last saw either of these," Rouge said, voice filled with wonder. "I'd almost forgotten about them… I thought you threw them out, or something, because I was too old for them!"

Blanc snorted. "Throw them out? Daughter, you dragged those things from one end of the Castle to the other. You cried whenever I pried them out of your hands even for a moment, even if just to wash them! I lost count of the number of times I had to stitch them back together because of the wear and tear and your accidentally ripping them apart with your developing vampire strength…How could I possibly discard something that brought my daughter so much joy and happiness? And that's not the only thing from your past that's here…or have you forgotten your first crib?" the elder bat asked, patting a nearby crib of mahogany with a mobile of stars and moons and bats and eldritch signs dangling over it, several of the bars splaying outwards from a gaping hole in the side.

Rouge's eyes lit up when she saw her old resting place. "I remember that… You had to move me into a stone one because I kept chewing my way through the bars!"

"We've got that went down here, too," Blanc said, patting the second crib, this one made of stone, also with a large hole smashed through several of the bars. "When you broke out of it when your strength came in, I decided it was time to move you to coffins. And yes," she said with a chuckle, gesturing to several small coffins, each larger than the last, lying in a row next to the cribs. Some of them had holes in them as well. "We've got them down here, too."

…

Everyone stared at Rouge. "What?" The bat asked defensively.

"Sorry, I'm just trying to imagine you as a baby," Amy confessed. "It's kinda hard."

"Suddenly, I find you a lot less intimidating now that I know you went around everywhere with a blanket and a stuffed animal," Espio said.

"It must've been so _cute_!" Cream squealed.

"YOU-SHOULD-SEE-HER-BABY-PICTURES. THEY-ARE-ADORABLE," Omega said.

Rouge laughed nervously, starting to think this may have been a mistake. "Then I guess it's a good thing all my old photo albums are back in the Castle, right?"

"ACTUALLY, I-STORED-THE-IMAGES-IN-MY-MEMORY-BANKS-AND-CAN-DISPLAY-THEM-WITH-MY-PROJECTORS-" Omega started.

'Right! Back to the story!" Rouge said very loudly.

…

"Wow… I haven't thought about those days in years…not since…well, not since I outgrew them," Said the awestruck Rouge, clutching her blanket and doll to her chest. "But… What are they doing down here?"

"Why, the same thing _my_ first blanket and stuffed doll and crib and coffin are doing down here, and that of my mother's, and hers, and hers, going back for generations. Why we have photo albums, old toys, wedding dresses, collections of snow globes and trading cards, and more. Why we have Great-Uncle Vlad's collection of severed heads, or cousin Nosferatu's capes, or good old Great-great-grandpa Drac's baby fangs. Why we have _everything_ you see around you, all these wondrous pieces of history! Tell me, Rouge, what is the most valuable thing an immortal can possess?" Blanc asked her daughter, whirling about to gesture at everything around them.

"… My first impulse is money or power, but I'm guessing that's the wrong answer," Rouge said after a moment.

"Correct. Money and power are all very important things, Rouge. As I've impressed upon you, wealth and knowledge are very important things for any ruler can possess… But they are not for the _person_ wearing the crown," Blanc explained. "There is a difference between the you-who-is-Queen, and the you-who-is-you. It can be a hard distinction to make at times, but one you must always be aware of, and make time for, lest you lose yourself solely to the throne and become a prisoner of your own power, as much a slave to your position as the thralls are to you." She glanced at her daughter. "The thing about being an immortal is that you have time enough for everything. Enough to make and lose dozens of fortunes, to the point where you eventually take it for granted. Let's say you lose everything due to a stock market crash, a series of bad investments, or some other financial disaster. Heck, maybe even the entire kingdom crumbles around you and everything you've built falls to ruin. Yes, it's tragic, but so what? You made it before, and you have more than enough time to make it again, just like there will always be time to learn new things, and for many of the things you were once absolutely certain were true to be disproven and changed. So, while important, they cannot truly be classified as _treasures_ , especially since so much of it is, ultimately, fleeting. What, then, is the most precious thing an immortal can possess?"

Rouge thought, and thought hard. "…Companionship?" she asked after a moment.

Blanc blinked in surprise, then paused, considering. "…Huh. I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, that's a good answer. Not the one I was expecting, though…"

"But isn't having friends and family around you very precious?" asked the confused Rouge.

"What? Ah, well…yes, those are all incredibly important," Blanc admitted. "However…the problem is those important people might not always be there."

"Why not?" asked the confused Rouge.

"Well, the problem is…if they're mortal, you're going to eventually outlive them," Blanc said bluntly. "And even if they're immortal, that doesn't mean they'll always stick around. Maybe they decide they want to go off and do their own thing for a while. Maybe they'll come back, maybe they won't. Or maybe your friendship, your love…falls apart. The sad truth is that not all relationships last, no matter how much time or work you put into them. That isn't an argument against having them, of course—being with others is always important, nobody in this world should ever be alone—it's simply a fact of life. People sometimes just grow apart, and it can be hard to make time for loved ones when you have to run a kingdom. Some can make peace with that. Others…can't." She sighed. "It's one thing to _say_ 'friends forever' or 'eternal love,' but… Forever is a lot longer than most people realize, and what seemed like a sure thing when you were younger might not look the same a few hundred years down the line. Oh, that's not to say such things don't exist—most of our ancestors found lifelong love, and many of the friends I knew when I was younger are still around now- it's just that not all of them can go the distance. Even I will not always be here for you…once you take the throne, I shall go to my rest in the Crypt of the Elders, and while you can come see me whenever you wish…it will not be the same."

Rouge bit her lip and looked down, realizing this for the first time. She'd always taken it for granted that her mother would always be there, but… Once she entered the Crypt, it would all change, wouldn't it?

…

"...That was a little depressing," Knuckles commented as a somewhat glum mood fell over them.

"That...that can't be right, can it? I mean, all of us...we can't eventually _stop_ being friends someday, can we?" Cream asked desperately.

"Yeah, and I'll _always_ love Sonic!" Amy agreed.

"'Always' is a lot longer than you might think. Take it from me," Blaze said with a hint of sadness. Sonic gently touched her shoulder, and she shot him a fond look of gratitude.

"The sad truth is...people sometimes just grow apart," Tails said. "Just look at Sonic and Mighty. They used to be best friends and super-close, but then...well, things happened, and they fell out of touch. It wasn't because either of them did anything _wrong,_ it just...happened." Sonic and Mighty glanced at each other guiltily, and then looked away uncomfortably. Now it was Blaze's turn to touch his shoulder, and his to smile in thanks.

"What happened with us and Mighty counts as well," Espio said glumly. "We used to be friends, but then, due to a stupid decision, we...aren't."

"You can say that again," Mighty muttered bitterly.

"And not all families stick together, either. Just look at what happened with Amy's dad," Vector pointed out, causing the pink hedgehog to wince. The crocodile's face sagged. "Or _my_ mom…"

"Or my parents, who abandoned me for no reason," Charmy grumbled.

"I'd say that voice was a good reason," Shadow said flatly.

"Shadow!" cried an aghast Cream.

"What? It's terrible!" Shadow insisted.

"IT-GRATES-ON-MY-AUDITORY-SENSORS," Omega agreed.

"Gee, thanks, guys," Charmy snarled.

"And if that could happen to them...it could happen to us as well someday, maybe," Tails said unhappily. "It's not something we like to think about, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. Some relationships stand the test of time. Others...don't. I mean, we'll _probably_ be okay, but...well...none of us know what the future holds. Except Silver, and he's not talking."

"Nope," the psychic time traveler said.

A silence fell over the group as they contemplated the possibility of an eventual end to their circle of friendship as time went on and their lives took them in separate directions. Directions not everyone could follow, what with most of them being mortal and others not.

"Wait, Rouge, are you saying that when you take the throne, your mom's going to _die?!_ " Charmy asked, desperately trying to change the subject.

"What? No, of course not," said the startled Rouge, secretly grateful for the shift in topics. "Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Um…well, you said she's going to 'her rest' in a crypt, so…" Tails pointed out, relieved to be discussing something slightly more palatable, even if that something was the potential death of Rouge's mom.

Rouge rolled her eyes. "We're _vampires_. We _like_ sleeping in coffins. For us, a crypt wouldn't be a burial place so much as, well, a retirement home!"

"Ohhhhh," everyone said.

"But then why would everything be different when she goes down there?" Asked the puzzled Cream.

"It's… A little hard to explain," Rouge said, biting her lip. "The Crypt is where all the past rulers of Fangsylvania go once they pass the throne on to their heirs. There, they enter a sort of hibernative fugue state. Their dreaming minds, no longer bound by the affairs of state, are free to explore other realms through the astral plane, accumulating limitless knowledge and wisdom from worlds beyond our own and having all sorts of incredible adventures unlike any we could possibly comprehend."

"Oh, like Tikal!" Knuckles said.

"Yes, except they still keep their bodies," Rouge agreed.

"Hmm, I wonder if they've ever run into each other up there…" Amy mused.

"It's a possibility, though they've never mentioned seeing any echidnas. Then again, I've never asked," Rouge admitted. "Maybe I'll do it next time I'm home."

"Don't they ever wake up?" Asked the concerned Sonic.

Rouge shrugged. "Why would they want to? After running a kingdom of monsters and most of the world for centuries, a peaceful retirement and indefinite vacation is the _least_ they deserve. Compared to the sorts of things they get up to in their sleep, there isn't much left our world has to offer them, anyway. In fact, to them, the world they once knew might as well be a dream, and the worlds they see in their slumber their reality."

"Yeah, I kind of felt like that for a while after I finally got out of my coma," Mighty admitted.

"Which isn't to say that they cannot be spoken to or visited," Rouge continued. "As they slumber and explore, their subconsciouses fuse together into a sort of 'gestalt' entity we call the Elder Mind, born from the combined wisdom and experiences of all the prior rulers of Fangsylvania. When in dire need—or if they just feel like visiting their relatives for a friendly chat to see how they're doing-the ruling monarch can visit the Mind to ask for advice, guidance, or interesting stories about the sorts of things they've learned. When my mother goes to her rest, her mind will join the collective. That is not to say that she will be assimilated, or will suffer ego death or anything like that… It'll still be her, but it'll also be everyone else, too. When I go to visit her, I can speak to her individually, or the Mind as a whole. She will still be there for me, but… Well, it won't be the same."

"That's kind of sad," Knuckles said.

Rouge shrugged. "All children must outgrow and move beyond their parents eventually. That's just how it is."

"Even me?" Cream asked timidly, frightened at the idea of leaving home and her mother behind.

Rouge chuckled and rubbed the rabbit's head affectionately. "Don't worry, dear, you won't have to worry about that for many years to come."

"So… Something about that doesn't quite make sense," Vector said. "Your family's immortal, right? So… Why step down at all? Why even bother with heirs, when you can just rule forever?"

"Three reasons. One, ruling a nation, let alone an entire world, is _exhausting_ , and sooner or later you'll be good and ready to hand it over to someone else," Rouge said. "Second, if you don't eventually hand it over to your kids, they might get impatient and try to take it themselves, which leads to all sorts of problems. And third… While the Dark Heart grants incredible power, it also… wears at you. Eventually, it becomes a burden too great to bear, and so it is time for a younger vampire to step up and take it so the elder may rest and recuperate. I shall inherit the Heart from my mother, rule for hundreds if not thousands of years, and when I tire of it I shall pass it onto my child, and enter the Crypt to rest beside my mother and all who came before me."

Sonic glanced at Blaze in concern. "Is that something you're ever going to have to worry about?"

The cat shook her head. "The source of my power works… Differently from this Dark Heart. It is not a burden I must bear, rather, simply a part of me that I've long since grown to accept." She shrugged. "I may change my mind someday, of course… After all, I have a very long time to do it in… But for the moment, I've no intention of stepping down or passing my power to somebody else once I've taken over my world." She frowned. "I'm not even sure I _could_ , anyway."

"We're _really_ going to need to hear your whole story at some point," Espio said.

"You will, in time," Blaze promised.

"But right now, we're still on my story," Rouge said. "Anyway…"

…

"However, even if people you care for eventually go away, they aren't completely gone. They still leave you with something important… The same thing that everything in this chamber represents," Blanc continued. "And have you figured out what that is?"

Rouge frowned thoughtfully, looking down at the blanket and doll in her hands, recalling the warm rush of feeling and recollection that had shot through her upon being reunited with them, all the fun times and grand (for a child) adventures she'd gone on with them. She looked at her old cribs, and mobiles, and coffins, and other toys and dresses and books and pictures and other things she realized she recognized from her childhood, things that she had not seen in quite some time, had all but forgotten, but now were pushed to the forefront of her mind, along with all the emotions and experiences attached to them..

And in that moment, she knew the answer. "Memory," she said.

Blanc nodded. "Indeed. Memory is the most important thing for people like us. Long after the people or things we care for are gone, we still _remember_ them and what they meant to us, and those memories can serve as a warm comfort in the darkest of times, a source of strength when we need them most. Everything in this vault was at one point or another precious to a member of our family, and remains so because of the powerful memories and feelings attached to them. Our triumphs, our tragedies, our loves and our friendships, our many experiences and adventures both fantastic and domestic, or even just fun hobbies we took great pleasure in when we weren't spending all our time running a kingdom. Those objects are preserved here, so that when we need a break from being Supreme Ruler of All we can come down here and think back fondly of times long past, so that we can have the strength to go out and make more precious memories to be preserved here for the sake of ourselves and those who come after us." She paused. "Well, that, and also so that none of these objects can be used against us. Sympathetic magic is a very powerful and ancient form of sorcery, and there are a _lot_ of people who could do us a great deal of harm if they were ever to get their hands on any of this. That's why we rarely throw things away…."

"Doesn't that make us hoarders, then?" Rouge asked in concern.

Blanc chuckled. "No, dear, _poor_ people are hoarders. We're rich, which makes us _collectors._ Totally different."

"Ah, of course," Rouge said.

…

"Wait, is that really the only difference?" Amy asked.

"Pretty much," Vector said.

"Yeah, just like how poor people are crazy but rich people are _eccentric,_ " Charmy said, rolling his eyes.

"That vault sounds lovely, Miss Rouge," Cream said. "We have a pretty big attic and storeroom of old things as well, but nothing on that level."

"Well, my family's had a lot longer to collect things like that than yours, so it's to be expected," Rouge said.

"Do you have anything like that, Blaze?" Mighty asked.

Blaze shook her head. "I have several trophy rooms honoring my many victories and conquests over the centuries, but… Nothing quite like that. Not a whole _chamber_ of memories, anyway. I suppose, again, it might have something to do with my style of ruling being different from that of the vampires… Or maybe it's just that I'm less sentimental, and place lower value in objects and trinkets." She made a face. "Or maybe it's because I have fewer truly 'precious' memories, and not too many objects I can associate them with, save my trophies."

"That's kind of sad," Knuckles said sympathetically.

Blaze shrugged. "It is what it is. I'm just not that kind of person, I guess."

"Well, I think you're perfect just the way you are," Sonic said. "And if you don't think you have too many 'precious' memories, then we'll just go out and make some more!"

The Royal feline smiled gratefully. "Thank you, beloved. It's good to know that I have someone like you by my side." Amy fumed and gnashed her teeth.

…

"Every object here has a story, pertaining to one of our ancestors," Blanc continued.

"Do you know them all?" Rouge asked in awe.

"I do," Blanc confirmed.

"What's that?" Rouge asked, pointing to a snowglobe on one of the shelves.

"A memento of Great-Uncle Virgil's trip to Vegas. I believe he was banned from the city after burning down a casino by accident, killing a major crime family, and turning several dozen hookers into ghouls which he brought back with him," Blanc said. She chuckled and shook her head. "Always had loads of fun on vacations, Great-Uncle Virgil…"

"And that?" Rouge asked, pointing to a large metal table with very sturdy looking restraints on it leaning against a shelf.

"Part of the equipment used to create the first Franken, during one of the biggest lightning storms in history," Blanc explained.

"And that?" Rouge asked, pointing to a skeleton of what looked like a demonic pterodactyl dangling from the ceiling.

"The remains of your Great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Marduk's beloved pet Soarin, whom he was forced to put down after he developed a taste for vampire flesh," Blanc said. She shook her head sadly. "He was never the same after that…"

"And that?" Rouge asked, pointing at what looked like an incredibly ornate solid gold Egyptian sarcophagus covered in jewels and precious stones.

"A gift from the mummies to celebrate your Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Bleu's wedding," Blanc explained. "He tried sleeping in it, declared it to be the best Coffin he'd ever slept in, and slept in it for the rest of his reign, and would have taken it with him to rest in upon entering the Crypt if it weren't against tradition."

"Can I try it?" Rouge asked.

"Maybe another time," Blanc said.

"And that?" Rouge asked, pointing at an absolutely gorgeous black dress glittering with black diamonds and black pearls and a lot of other black things.

Blanc sighed wistfully. "That's the dress my Grandmother wore at the ball where she first met Grandfather. It was love at first bite. By which I mean, of course, she bit him, he became a vampire, and they got married soon after."

"Wow," Rouge said, impressed. "You really _do_ remember all of their stories!"

Blanc shrugged. "I've had a lot of time to memorize them."

"Is there anything here of yours?" Rouge asked.

"Certainly. In fact, my most precious treasure is down here. Would you like to see it?" Blanc asked.

"Would I!" Rouge gushed enthusiastically.

"Then follow me. We'll take the scenic route," Blanc said, heading off into the shelves.

They spent a merry few hours down in the vault, slowly meandering their way through the labyrinth of memories. Blanc would occasionally stop to tell Rouge the story behind a particularly interesting object, which the young vampire listened to rapturously. From all the books she'd read, stories she'd heard, and even talking to the Elder Mind on the few occasions she'd gone down to chat with the gestalt consciousness, she'd always imagined her ancestors to be dignified, noble vampires, the perfect embodiment of all the glamorous myths and legends about her kind. But if even half of the more embarrassing stories Blanc related to her daughter were true, they were a lot more goofy and flawed and, well, Mobian than they'd wanted anyone to know, which led Rouge to wonder if part of the reason all these things were down here was so that nobody else would know about some of the more humiliating things that the past rulers had gotten themselves involved in. Rouge found that she rather liked learning about all the stories that had been carefully excised from the official biographies, it made her ancestors feel more like real people than idealized legends. Not even Blanc was immune from this, as she related a few more personal tales that made both of them blush and cause Rouge to look at her mother in a whole new way. Would she get up to even a _fraction_ of the antics her mother had been involved in by the time she was her age?

Finally, they came to a stop in front of a tall object covered by a sheet. "Here we are, daughter," Blanc said proudly. "Beneath this sheet lies my most precious treasure."

"What is it?" Rouge asked excitedly.

"See for yourself," Blanc said, stepping aside.

Rouge eagerly whipped off the sheet, revealing…

A mirror. A large, full-body mirror held between a pair of posts. It was plain, unadorned, and the glass slightly tarnished. "What's the story behind this one?" Rouge asked, having learned by now not to judge by appearances. Even the most humdrum and mundane of objects in this vault could have a tale attached to them that could have her rolling on the floor in laughter, or double over in great, heaving sobs.

"Oh, this thing? It's just an old mirror that your Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandmother had a fondness for and would sometimes spend hours posing in front of to get the perfect 'Vampire Queen' look down," Blanc said. She glanced away in embarrassment. "She's not the only one…"

Rouge blinked in confusion. "Huh? But I thought you said this was _your_ most precious treasure."

"What do you see when you look in the mirror?" Blanc asked.

"Uh… I see my reflection," said the confused Rouge. Blanc nodded and said nothing. After a moment, Rouge's eyes widened. "Oh…OHHHHHH…"

Blanc glided up behind Rouge and bent down, putting her hands on her daughter's shoulders so that both of them were looking into the mirror. After moment, the elder vampire said, "I said before that while family and friends are wonderful things, they may not always be there. That does not, however, mean that you shouldn't go out and get some anyway. Even if you eventually part ways, you will always have the memories of your times together…and, when you have a child of your own, the knowledge that you've brought something absolutely irreplaceable into this world." She glanced down at Rouge. "Far too many powerful people consider their children as nothing more than extensions of themselves, tools they can use to obtain even more power and secure their legacies. Never, _ever_ treat your own child like that, Rouge. While I love being Queen, and take great pride in all the things I've done for Fangsylvania, _you_ are my greatest achievement, and when you have a child, make sure they know that they are yours."

Rouge's vision grew blurry. She had to blink several times to clear the water that had suddenly formed in her eyes. "I will, Mother. I promise."

…

Amy sniffled, eyes watering. "Okay, am I the only one who has a sudden urge to call her mom and tell her how much she loves her?"

"No, I feel like that too," Cream said, tearing up. Everyone else who had a mother nodded in agreement, not a single one of their eyes dry. Everyone who did not have a mother fidgeted awkwardly and couldn't help feeling somewhat envious.

Charmy, however, was just bitter. "I don't, considering my mom abandoned me because she hated my voice," he grumbled.

"And my mom's in another dimension, and I might never get to meet her," Knuckles complained.

"LIFE-IS-ROUGH," Omega said unsympathetically.

"I don't tell my daughter I love her as much as I should," Blaze said suddenly. "She knows I do, of course, but… I should tell her more often once I get back home."

"… Wait, you have a kid?!" Mighty asked incredulously.

"Yes. I never mentioned?" Blaze asked in surprise.

"NO!" everyone except Sonic, Tails, and Cream yelled.

"Oh. Well, I have a daughter," Blaze said. "And now you know."

"Sonic, were you aware of this?" Espio asked Sonic.

The blue hedgehog nodded. "Yep! I've met her lots of times. Sweet kid. Well, some of the time. She's a real chip off the old block!"

"Aha!" Amy declared, pointing at Blaze. "I knew it! Sonic, she's cheating on you! She doesn't love you at all, she's just using you!"

"Actually, if she already has an offspring, wouldn't that mean that she's cheating on her current spouse with Sonic?" Shadow asked.

"Well, that's assuming she's actually married. Remember, Blaze herself has mentioned she's been around a very long time. Her daughter could be from a previous marriage decades or even centuries ago," Mighty pointed out. He paused in thought, then said, "You know, Sonic always _was_ into older women…"

"Oh, shut up, you," Sonic mumbled in embarrassment, turning red.

"Close. My daughter Honey is adopted, but she's been my daughter for a very long time. Ever since before I took the throne, in fact," Blaze explained.

"… Okay, there's _got_ to be an interesting story in that," Charmy said, intrigued.

Blaze nodded. "There is. And I shall tell it when it is my turn."

"So…if Honey is adopted, does that mean you've never been married, or…" Shadow asked.

Blaze looked uncomfortable. "Sonic… Is not my first love. I've been married before, but… It didn't end well. I would rather not talk about it." She smiled fondly at the blue hedgehog. "However, I assure you that none of my past lovers held a candle to Sonic. Not a one of them was even half the man he is."

Amy side blissfully. "Yeah, he's the best, isn't he?" She paused, then did a double take when she realized, to her horror, that she'd actually _agreed_ with her rival.

"Aww, thanks, Blaze! You're the best, too!" Sonic said, kissing the cat on the cheek and causing her to blush and Amy to seethe.

"Is that the end of the story?" Silver asked Rouge, trying to get them back on track.

"Almost," Rouge said. "There was one more thing my mother had to tell me…"

…

"When you are a little older, many years from now, your first great trial shall begin," Blanc said, still looking at their reflections. "I shall send you out into the world, beyond the Demonfang Range. The lion's share of your power shall be sealed before your departure, and a glamour placed upon you so that none of my enemies will be able to find you or recognize you even if you should walk right past them. A body double shall take your place to make everyone think you're still here, of course, and certain…other countermeasures shall be taken to ensure your safety from most other dangers. I would rather not go into them, lest they lose their power and thus render you vulnerable."

"You're sending me away? But why?" Rouge asked.

"Outside my shadow, you will have a chance to thrive, and experience the freedom you are denied living in these Castle walls, both as a Princess… And as the Queen you shall one day become," Blanc explained. "But this is not simply a long vacation for you. Using only your wits and the skills and abilities which I shall leave you with, you shall amass a fortune and gather a sizable amount of information on the people and world around you to prove that you understand how to accumulate and utilize wealth and knowledge. You may use any method or vocation you wish to achieve these goals. There are no wrong answers, and no single path to success. After 100 years abroad, you shall return, and if I deem your efforts satisfactory, you will move on to the next level of your training."

"And if my efforts are _not_ satisfactory?" Rouge asked cautiously, trying and failing to hide a tremor in her voice. Go to the outside world, and handle a task of this magnitude, all alone? While she'd always wanted to see the world outside Fangsylvania, to do so all by herself, without her considerable powers to protect her, was a rather frightening prospect. And to complete this quest, as well…

"They shall be," Blanc said calmly. "You are my daughter. I have every confidence that you will not only succeed, but excel my expectations." She smiled and hugged Rouge from behind. "I suppose it must seem like a lot of pressure, but it will prepare you for the even greater trials of ruling the kingdom. And do not worry yourself… You have many years before I shall send you away. Years in which you will grow, and mature, and learn everything you will need to know to succeed on your own."

"Even so… 100 years, all by myself, far from home… And you…" Rouge said nervously.

"I do not look forward to the prospect of being apart from you for so long either," Blanc admitted. "But you must learn to be self-reliant, to take care of yourself on your own…because you will not always have me to lean on. And besides, what are a measly hundred years to an immortal?"

"Still a long time…" Rouge said quietly.

"That it is," Blanc agreed. "But I believe it to be the best way to prepare you for your future role… And for you to get a better understanding of the world outside, the world which we rule in secret." She smiled and nuzzled her daughter's cheek. "And besides… Whenever you get lonely, think of me, and remind yourself that once it's all over, you will have a home waiting for you, and someone who loves you."

Rouge sniffed, trying not to cry again. She was a big girl, dammit! "O-okay. I…I promise I won't let you down, Mother."

"You never could, daughter," Blanc assured her child. She gently turned Rouge away from the mirror. "Now, let's put those serious thoughts of the future aside for the moment. Come, take a look at this clown wig here. I assure you, the story behind it is as hilarious as it is horrifying…"

Rouge's smile returned as her mother related the grisly and gut-bustingly funny story of how Great-Great-Uncle Victor defeated the King of the Killer Klowns in a joke contest. Yes, the prospect of leaving home for a hundred years and being rendered mostly powerless was rather daunting…but it was still a long way off, and ultimately, it might not be so bad after all. Every bird had to leave the nest eventually, and besides, it would give her a chance to make more memories to stow in this Vault, like all those who came before her.

And then, once she had a child of her own, she'd take her down here, and tell her her own stories, and show her the mirror, and make her feel like she was the most important thing in the world. To do any less would dishonor her mother, the greatest woman she knew.

…

"After that, time passed. I grew older, trained, had all sorts of experiences I don't feel like relating, and eventually, my mother sealed most of my powers and sent me to the outside world," Rouge continued, smiling at the enraptured looks on the faces of her audience. "I won't relate the sorts of adventures I had in my early days trying to adjust to a world where the sun is shining and there aren't monsters everywhere, or at least, not in plain sight. That's a story for another day. After a great deal of deliberation, I eventually decided that while I could use my considerable intellect and education to get a high paying job just about anywhere and start making my fortune that way, I decided it would be much more fun to become a jewel thief, because I'd always been a fan of the stories of mysterious and glamorous Phantom Thieves, those stylish rogues who always adhere to a code of honor, only striking at the most high-profile targets and making sure to alert authorities of their plans ahead of time, just for an added challenge."

"Oh yeah, those are the coolest!" Charmy agreed.

"Did you ever have any Great Detective rivals who swore to catch you whom you had a sort of flirtatious game of cat-and-mouse with?" Vector asked eagerly. "I love those sorts of things."

Rouge sighed. "Sadly, no. There were a few that tried, but…none of them measured up, in the end. A pity, I wouldn't have minded one of those myself…"

"Did you ever manage to steal any landmarks or time periods or languages or other impossible, nigh-abstract things?" Cream asked excitedly.

"No dear, that's Carmen Sandiego. Unfortunately, while I'm good, I'm not _that_ good," Rouge lamented, much to the rabbit's disappointment. "Well, not yet, anyway. Anyway, even with my vampire powers significantly weakened, I was still more than capable of breaking into just about any security on the planet and slipping out unnoticed, and in doing so embarked upon a very profitable and enjoyable criminal enterprise. I've stolen from museums and galleries and vaults all over the world, amassing a tremendous amount of money in stolen goods, many of which I never sold, keeping the treasures I felt the greatest pride in stealing for myself. I got a rather sizable fan following, with people worldwide wondering where I'd strike next, and how I managed to pull off heists so flawless and audacious it left crime enforcement everywhere looking like Incompetent fools. You'd be surprised how many people jokingly guessed that I might be a vampire!

"And then, I attempted my most daring robbery of all: to steal a Chaos Emerald from the secure vaults of the GUN Fortress! And there I finally met my match, and was caught and arrested by GUN Commander himself, and so my career as a world-famous Phantom Thief came to an end…"

She grinned. "Or at least, that's what I _wanted_ everyone to think."

It took a moment for everyone to realize her meaning. "Wait, are you saying… That you _let_ yourself get caught? But why?" Asked a confused Amy.

Rouge chuckled. "It's simple, really. Thanks to my lucrative career as a jewel thief and the extra profits my nightclub side business was raking in-"

"What _is_ it with vampires and nightclubs, anyway?" Tails interjected.

Rouge shrugged. "It's a place of business that's open all night, attracts lots of vibrant healthy young people, and lowers their inhibitions enough so that even the lowliest of vampires can feed on them with ease. It's a perfect setup, really. Plus, it's fun."

"Fair enough," Vector said.

"I dream of the day when I'll be able to go to a nightclub without having to use fake ID," Charmy said.

"Anyway, thanks to my criminal enterprise, nightclub, and careful management of the stock market I was raking in the dough, so was demonstrating quite well that I'd mastered 'wealth.' 'Knowledge,' however… While my underworld contacts were able to supply me with a great deal of information about people and operations in both high and low levels of society, I didn't believe it would be enough to satisfy and impress Mother," Rouge explained. "So, I got a brilliant idea. I broke into GUN, and instead of making off with the loot—which I could _easily_ have done if I really wanted to-I allowed myself to get caught, and then, rather than go to trial, I cut a deal. I'd already made it clear over the several years I've been operating as a master thief that I had a skill set and talents that might be of… Considerable use to an organization like GUN. So, rather than rot in prison, I became a secret agent, allegedly working for the government in exchange for expunging my record, putting me in the _perfect_ position to learn a great many things I would not have been able to otherwise, things which I'm not even certain Mother knows." She grinned. "And of course, none of them suspected that while I was spying on their enemies for them, so too was I spying on them, and I know much, much, _much_ more about them than they would be comfortable with."

"… That's actually pretty brilliant," Amy said grudgingly. The others nodded in agreement.

"And exactly what sorts of things _have_ you learned?" Asked an intrigued Blaze.

Rouge grinned. "I know where all the nukes are kept, and the codes to activate them. I know the locations of every secret GUN base worldwide, and every undercover agent. I know about all of their secret projects, including their attempts to reverse-engineer Eggman's technology or Doc Blue's Genesis device."

"Wait, what?!" Tails exclaimed in horror.

"Oooh, Doc's not gonna be happy about that…" Sonic growled darkly.

"I know of countless terrorist plots to throw the civilized world into chaos, as well as the intentions of… Other powers not necessarily of this world," Rouge continued. "I know just how many times our planet has been on the verge of destruction, only to be saved by the smallest of fractions… And only a handful of those times were because of Sonic."

The blue hedgehog blinked. "I'm not sure what to think of that."

"Not everything revolves around you, blue hedgehog," Shadow said bluntly. Again.

"I know the names of all the President's mistresses, as well as how many children he has out of wedlock and where they can be found," Rouge said with a smirk.

"What?! But that can't be right, he was elected on a family values platform!" said the shocked Amy.

"… And you _believed_ him?" asked an incredulous Mighty.

"Yeah, whenever politicians run a campaign based on something like that, they've _always_ got something dirty on the side, it's textbook!" Vector said.

"… Well, now I know for sure I'm not going to vote to reelect him…" Amy grumbled.

"Mommy never voted for him," Cream said proudly. "She voted for the other guy."

"Actually, the other guy was a shape shifting alien," Shadow said. He paused. "Who, in retrospect, might actually have been a better leader than the current President."

"I miss our old President," Sonic complained. "He didn't back down when Eggman threatened to blow up the world or aliens invaded, and was pretty cool about me jumping into his car and Shadow trying to assassinate him once or twice. Plus, he took a picture of us on the White House lawn! Shame about the heart attack…"

"It was poison, actually," Shadow said.

"It was?!" The horrified Charmy gasped.

"Yes. We took care of it, though," Shadow assured the others, who were clearly shocked.

"WITH-EXTREME-PREJUDICE," Omega said, clenching a fist.

"Oh. Well… Good," Sonic said, somewhat unsettled.

"Who was responsible?" Knuckles demanded.

"A quasi-governmental conspiracy made up of several of the top members of the armed forces and executive and legislative branches. Don't worry, they won't ever be a problem again," Shadow said.

"BECAUSE-WE-KILLED-THEM-ALL! IT-WAS-LOTS-OF-FUN. THERE-WAS-SO-MUCH-BLOOD-AND-SCREAMING," Omega fondly reminisced.

"…Er…right," Tails said uncomfortably.

"Sometimes you scare me, Mr. Omega," Cream squeaked.

"GOOD," the robot said proudly.

"Anyway, I also know things so secret that only GUN Commander knows them…well, he _thinks_ he's the only one," Rouge said, getting them back on topic.

"Like what?" Vector asked.

"His real name, for one. Abraham Tower," Rouge said.

"… That's actually a pretty cool name," Mighty admitted. The others nodded in agreement.

"He has an actual name? I always assumed his mom just named him 'GUN Commander,'" Knuckles said in surprise.

"Why the heck would you think that?" Vector asked.

"My mother named me Knuckles and my brother is basically Kneecaps. If something like that could be our birth names, why couldn't 'GUN Commander' be someone else's?" Knuckles reasoned.

"… That… Makes far more sense than it should," Shadow said after some thought. The others nodded uncertainly.

"I _also_ know his greatest shame," Rouge said with a juicy grin. "In his office, he has a secret closet. When nobody's watching, he opens it up, puts on the Shadow costume he has hidden there, and cries."

Everyone stared into space for a long uncomfortable moment as they struggled to process that image."… Okay, that's really freaking disturbing," Sonic said.

"I'm never going to be able to look at that guy the same way again," Vector said.

"I'm not sure whether I should be feeling sorry for him or intensely embarrassed," Cream confessed.

"Go with embarrassed. I know I was," Shadow said with a shudder of revulsion.

"So!" Silver said loudly. "That's why you became a jewel thief and an international spy. To impress your mother and become a better future Queen of the vampires. Very informative! Now, let's try to forget that mental image we all just had and move on to-"

"Hold on a moment," Blaze interjected. "I think there's one more question that needs to be answered. Rouge, you've hinted a few times that the source of your family's power, the Dark Heart, it is connected to… An entity of some sort. Care to elaborate?"

Rouge perked up at this. "Ah! Yes, I forgot. The Dark Heart draws its power from Dark Gaia."

Everyone started in alarm at this. "Wait a minute, Dark Gaia?! As in, the Dark Gaia that ripped the world apart, scattered monsters all over the world, and turned my darling Sonic into a big hairy monster with stretchy arms for some reason?! THAT Dark Gaia?!" Amy cried incredulously.

"I never really understood the deal with the arms," Sonic complained.

"And he's not your darling, he's mine," Blaze interjected. Amy hissed at her.

"How is that possible?! Or… Safe?!" asked an incredulous Tails. "Those who are possessed by Dark Gaia's power inevitably give into their darker emotions, unless they've got a pure heart like Sonic's!"

Rouge raised an eyebrow. "Are you trying to insinuate something, Tails?"

Tails flushed and stammered. "N-no, I-I didn't mean, ah, th-that is to say, um-"

Rouge burst into laughter. "I'm just joking with you. I know my heart isn't even remotely pure."

"It's pure _something,_ all right," Amy growled under her breath.

"And besides, who's to say I haven't _already_ given into my darker emotions? Remember that I'm a vampire, and the sorts of things that entails," Rouge pointed out.

They considered this. "The lady makes a good point," Vector admitted.

"It'd certainly explain a lot of things about the way she behaves. And dresses," Espio agreed.

"Is there something wrong with the way I dress?" Rouge demanded.

The Chaotix stared at her for a long moment. "Nope," Vector said.

"Nuh-uh," Charmy said.

"Not even remotely," Espio agreed.

Rouge grinned lasciviously, causing them to flush. "Good. Glad to see we're all in agreement on that."

"Rouge, your family's sacred artifact draws power from an ancient evil that routinely destroys the world?" asked a shocked Knuckles.

"YOURS-WIPED-OUT-YOUR-ENTIRE-CIVILIZATION-AND-SPECIES," Omega pointed out.

Knuckles considered this. "Point. Guess I'm not really one to judge in that respect. Glass houses and all that. "

"That still doesn't answer the question of how you _got_ Dark Gaia's power in the first place!" Tails yelled, trying to get them back on track. "Or aren't running around attacking people and stuff, driven mad by its dark energies!"

"Tails, I'm a vampire and come from a nation of monsters that have haunted the nightmares of cultures all over the world for thousands of years. Think about that for a moment," Rouge said.

Tails did. "Oh," he said.

Rouge nodded. "Yeah, the major difference between us and Dark Gaia's spawn is we're civilized—to an extent—and have other, more refined ways to sustain ourselves or channel our more negative impulses. Well, the smarter of us do, unlike those dumb mutts…plus, I look _way_ better than those critters."

"You do at that," Knuckles agreed.

"So, how _did_ you get power from Dark Gaia?" Sonic asked.

"Well, you have to remember, the battle you had with it was rather unique," Rouge began. "Most of the time it awakens to destroy the world, Light Gaia doesn't appear to fight it until after it's already shattered the planet and wiped out pretty much everything already existing on it. As I'm sure you can imagine, the resulting battles between the two ancient Titans are pretty cataclysmic, and not just limited to the center of the Earth. The last time the two Gaias dueled, a sizable chunk of land got saturated in Dark Gaia's blood after it took a pretty nasty blow from Light Gaia. After Dark Gaia went back to sleep and Light Gaia remade the world, that piece of land remained soaked in dark energy, warping it and all the creatures in it, giving rise to the primordial ancestors of all monsterkind. Thousands of years later, one of my most ancient ancestors, one of the first true vampires, found a fragment of Dark Gaia's body that had been broken off during the fight and discovered how to harness its power and residual connection to the sleeping horror, turning it into the Dark Heart and using its power to unite all monsters under his reign and establishing Fangsylvania."

"Interesting…" Blaze murmured.

"That… Actually explains a lot," Tails said, intrigued. "Like why you became a werehog after taking in a bit of Dark Gaia, Sonic!"

"It does?" Asked the confused Sonic.

Tails nodded. "If Dark Gaia's power was able to mutate the animals in prehistoric Fangsylvania into the ancestors of the monsters of today—vampires, werewolves, and so forth—it only stands to reason that exposure to that same power could artificially transform a modern Mobian into a similar creature!"

"Much like Chaos energy was able to turn _you_ from a basic fox into a Mobian," Sonic said, eyes lighting up in realization.

Tails nodded eagerly. "Precisely! I wonder if there's a connection… Perhaps this 'Dark Power' is on the same energy spectrum as Chaos, but on a different wavelength?"

"And it also explains why so many of those monsters of old are reputed to only come out at night, too," Espio commented. "Dark Gaia's monsters can't stand the light of day, so naturally neither could any creature changed by its power, hence why Sonic shifted back to normal whenever the Sun rose."

"But Rouge is standing right in front of us, and the sun doesn't seem to be bothering her any," Charmy argued.

The chameleon frowned. "Hmm…good point… Either I'm barking up the wrong tree, or she must have some way of protecting herself from the sunlight…"

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell us which it is?" Mighty asked.

Rouge shook her head. "Nope! But you're right about most of the other stuff, though. My kind has always favored night to day, and while some of us can tolerate the sun more than others, it's when darkness falls that we _really_ come into our own. It's part of our heritage as descendants of Dark Gaia."

"But… Then what happened when Dark Gaia woke up recently?" Amy asked. "Did that affect you or your people at all?"

Rouge made a face. "It did," she admitted. "We'd known Dark Gaia would awaken eventually and made contingency plans for it… But we didn't expect it to wake up this early thanks to Eggman, so were caught rather flat-footed."

"What happened?" Cream asked in concern.

"The Dark Heart started overloading due to Dark Gaia's awakening, and it nearly overwhelmed Mother," Rouge explained. "She was forced to shatter it to keep it from destroying her and half the kingdom, but was rendered comatose as a result, the fragments scattered to the far corners of Fangsylvania. The Duke of Werewolves decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to fulfill his lifelong dream of overthrowing my family and seizing the throne for himself, then taking advantage of the increased power he and all the other monsters got as a result of Dark Gaia's revival to conquer the world overtly—no more ruling from the shadows—and cast the Earth into an age of eternal darkness and terror."

"Oh my," said a shocked Cream.

"Wait, but didn't he know that once Dark Gaia reconstituted itself there wouldn't _be_ a world left to rule over?" Vector asked.

Rouge rolled her eyes. "The Duke of Werewolves is ambitious, but not smart. He probably assumed that monsterkind would survive the world's end due to our affinity with Dark Gaia, or figured that since Dark Gaia was woken up prematurely and fell apart it wouldn't be able to pull itself back together anytime soon. And to be fair, if Eggman hadn't expedited the process, he might have been right…"

"Stupid Eggman," Sonic growled.

"I was also affected by the surge in Dark Power. The seal on my power was broken, and I found myself assuming a somewhat more monstrous and feral form whenever the Sun went down," Rouge continued.

"Oh, like me!" Sonic said.

"Yes, except I was still drop-dead gorgeous—granted, it was more of a savage, wild beauty-and I didn't have stretchy arms," Rouge said.

"Speaking of which, do werewolves usually have stretchy arms?" Tails asked.

"No," Rouge replied.

Sonic scratched his head in puzzlement. "Then why the heck did _I?_ "

The bat shrugged. "Search me."

"I don't suppose you can show us what you looked like?" Espio asked.

"Certainly. Omega?" Rouge asked.

Omega's eyes lit up, projecting a hologram of a creature which was clearly Rouge, but…not as they knew her. Rouge's altered form bore some slight resemblance to Sonic's werehog form-bigger, hairier, more muscular, with claws and fangs-but there the similarities ended. Where the werehog had been burly and monstrous, Rouge was graceful and elegant, the shaggy white fur covering her lithe, muscular frame accentuating her natural curves-made more pronounced by her transformation-rather than obscuring them, marred only by a black bat-shaped mark in the space between her neck and breasts. Her feet had become talons, and sharp, dainty claws grew from the end of her fingers. Her wings had become much larger and blacker, and a second, smaller pair grew out from further down her back. Her hair had grown out into a long, shaggy mane spilling down her back between the wings past her waist. Her fangs had grown, and were bared in a fierce, yet amused smirk, and her blue eyes had turned red, staring out at them with a half-lidded stare that was equal parts seductive and hungry.

Vector wolf-whistled. "Damn! And here she thought looked good already!"

"Hey, that's my girl you're talking about!" Knuckles said indignantly, although he couldn't put too much heat in it because he was too busy staring at the hologram.

"…Yep, that's definitely a creature of the night," Tails said, licking his suddenly dry lips.

Sonic stared at the hologram for so long that Blaze started to feel annoyed. "… Why couldn't _I_ look that good?" He complained.

Amy gasped. "Rouge! How could you?! You're naked! Cream, don't look, it's indecent!" Cream, who had been staring at the hologram in wonder, yelped and quickly covered her eyes with her ears.

Blaze blinked in confusion. "What of it? Most of you are naked already."

"No we're not, at the very least we're wearing gloves and shoes!" Charmy pointed out.

Blaze stared at the bee blankly. "But that's… That isn't… Oh, never mind."

"I think they've seen enough, Omega," Shadow said with an amused smirk.

"I-DON'T-GET-WHAT-THE-BIG-DEAL-IS. SO-WHAT-IF-SHE-HAS-LARGE-MAMMARY-GLANDS? WHAT-DOES-THAT-HAVE-TO-DO-WITH-ANYTHING? I-DO-NOT-UNDERSTAND-ORGANIC-STANDARDS-OF-BEAUTY," Omega grumbled as he shut the hologram off, much to the relief of some and the disappointment of many.

"Due to my mother's state, I was recalled to Fangsylvania to assume the throne until she could recover," Rouge continued, inwardly chuckling at how everyone had reacted to the appearance of her alternate form. "I asked Shadow and Omega to come with me for moral support, and because I felt that I could depend on them to be by my side and have my back no matter what, since the troubled political climate the Werewolf Duke was instigating made it a little tricky to know who else I could trust."

"Which is how we learned of her true nature and past before the rest of you, of course," Shadow said.

"She never told you about it before?" Mighty asked.

Shadow shrugged. "We didn't ask. It didn't seem that important. We'd figured out she was a vampire a while ago, but we assumed that if the rest of her past were something she wanted us to know about, she'd tell us. We didn't see a point in prying."

"Another reason the two of you are my very best friends," Rouge said affectionately. "In any event, things looked pretty bad by the time I got home. The Duke had not only managed to rally all the werewolves to his banner, but also convinced the Franken, Mermen, Mummies, Gorgons, Mandrakes, Gargoyles, and a few more to join his cause. While many others-such as the Dragons, Nagas, Mermaids, Ghosts, Giants, Goblins, and of course my other vampiric kin-still remained loyal to the throne, others were either taking a neutral stance or waiting to see if they might have a chance to strike out and establish dominions of their own. Civil war was all but inevitable. Even with all the training and experience I had under my belt at that point, I knew it would take a lot of effort to keep the country from falling apart, and I was positive diplomacy might not be an option for much longer. I didn't think even Mother would be able to handle the situation without everything going to pot!"

"And to make matters worse, the Duke and several others started scouring the land for the fragments of the Dark Heart, believing they could use its power to take the kingdom for themselves," Shadow added.

"AND-THEN-THE-ALIENS-ATTACKED," Omega said.

"Yes, and then the aliens attacked," Shadow agreed.

Everyone stared at him blankly. "… Wait, what aliens?" Charmy asked in confusion.

"Why, the Black Arms, of course," Shadow said.

Everyone stared at him blankly again. "… But, um, didn't you, you know, KILL the Black Arms?" Sonic asked slowly.

"Yes, I specifically remember you blowing up their comet with the Eclipse Cannon after slaying their leader in single combat while the rest of us were paralyzed due to the nerve gas being spread around the world," Tails agreed.

"That wasn't all of them," Shadow explained. "Before Black Doom came to Earth, he left a secondary hive mind named Black Death behind on the last planet the Black Arms conquered in case of an emergency. When I killed Black Doom and destroyed the Black Comet, Black Death sensed it, piled his army into his own comet—creatively named the New Black Comet—and headed for Earth to get revenge."

"… Black Death? Really?" Asked a skeptical Mighty. "Are they TRYING to sound like cliched supervillains?"

Shadow shrugged. "Hey, I'm not the one who named him that."

"THIS-IS-WHAT-HE-LOOKED-LIKE," Omega said, projecting an image of a black-skinned alien with three yellow eyes wearing very ornate red, gold, and blue hooded robes covered in sun and moon markings. He also didn't have a lower body, for some reason.

"Huh. So basically, Black Doom but with fancier robes, different eyes, and no horns," Espio commented.

"Pretty much," Rouge said.

"Why do all the Black Arms leaders we know of lack lower bodies? What's with that?" Sonic wondered.

"There's a biological reason, but it's kind of complicated," Shadow said.

"How… How the heck did we not notice a SECOND alien invasion?!" Asked an incredulous Vector.

"They had a cloaking device, they focused their efforts on Fangsylvania because their scanners picked me up there, and because everyone was so busy dealing with the planet getting shattered they didn't have time to notice threats from outer space," Rouge explained.

"They were understandably intrigued by the Dark Gaia monsters wandering around, sensing the power and potential within them. They captured a few and, using their alien science and magic, were able to infuse some of their own troops with Dark Power, creating the deadly Pitch Black Arms," Shadow continued. "As a result, once they entered Fangsylvania, they felt drawn to the fragments of the Dark Heart, realizing that they could use it to bolster their own power and become strong enough to kill me and dominate the world."

"The Duke of Werewolves found out about them and offered to form an alliance with them, reasoning that their goals were similar," Rouge said. "He wanted me dead, Black Death wanted Shadow dead, and since the two of us were working together, it made sense for them to work together as well, especially since it would make it easier to retrieve the pieces of the Dark Heart. Naturally, both of them were planning to betray the other once they got what they wanted."

"Naturally," Blaze said.

"Typical supervillains. Unable to ever work together without betraying each other," Espio said in disgust.

"Well, at least that makes things easier for the rest of us," Charmy pointed out.

"With the addition of the Black Arms, all pretense of a diplomatic solution failed, and war broke out, despite my best efforts," Rouge said sadly. "All of us were forced to enter the fray in a desperate attempt to save my kingdom, and the world. Although I probably _should_ have stayed in the castle and directed all matters from afar, I wasn't ready to allow others to do all my fighting for me just yet, so I used my skills in espionage and subterfuge to infiltrate enemy strongholds, assassinate or abduct enemy leaders and persons of interest, perform sabotage, gather intel, and reclaim stolen fragments of the Dark Heart. I also had several run-ins with a vampire/treasure hunter named Belle the Monitor Lizard, who's part of a family line that's been trying to kill mine for generations and was hired by the Duke to inconvenience me. _That_ was annoying. Don't bother showing a picture, Omega, I don't want to see her face again."

"I-LED-THE-LOYALIST-ARMIES-FROM-THE-FRONT, ENGAGING-THE-FOE-IN-SWEEPING-BATTLES. I-PERSONALLY-KILLED-THOUSANDS, BOTH-ALIEN-AND-REBEL-ALIKE, AND-HAD-EPIC-DUELS-WITH-ENEMY-GENERALS. IT-WAS- _GLORIOUS_ ," Omega said, eyes gleaming with joy.

"And I did what we hedgehogs do best: launched daring one-man guerilla assaults on enemy bases, slaughtering soldiers, destroying superweapons and monsters, and generally throwing up a big enough fuss that it would divert attention from Rouge's own activities in the field," Shadow said smugly. "I also found myself dealing with a new rival… Eclipse the Darkling."

"… Eclipse the Darkling. _Really_?" Mighty asked skeptically.

"I told you, I didn't name him!" Shadow protested.

"Who or what was he?" Sonic asked, somewhat incensed that Shadow could have a rival other than him.

"A Black Arms super soldier, the self-proclaimed 'Ultimate Alien.' Think of him as me, but without the hedgehog DNA. Black Death created him to surpass me, well aware that the armies of his kind had not fared so well against me in the past and figuring that a creature more like me might have a better chance of taking me down. He was my equal in speed and strength, and was able to boost his powers to insane levels by utilizing the abilities of his 'Dark Arms,' essentially the Black Arms version of the Wisps. And _yes,_ Mighty, I _know_ how it sounds, but I _didn't_ name them, okay?!" Shadow snapped.

Mighty raised his hands defensively. "I wasn't going to say anything!"

"Yeah, I'm sure. Anyway, we clashed many times over the course of the war, often dueling over pieces of the Dark Heart," Shadow continued. "However, while Black Death wanted me dead, Eclipse felt differently. Since we shared the same blood—what with me being half alien and all-he felt like the two of us shouldn't be fighting at all, and kept trying to convince me to switch sides and join my 'true family,' calling me 'Brother.' Naturally, I had no intention of betraying my friends or planet-"

"Again," Knuckles deadpanned

Shadow rolled his eyes. "Yes, echidna, _again._ However, I could not bring myself to hate Eclipse. I saw a lot of myself in him, and felt a sort of kinship with him, and on some level started to think of him as—if not a brother—then at least a worthy adversary and rival. Maybe even more than you, Sonic."

"…HEY!" Sonic shouted indignantly.

"He pushed me to my limits in ways nobody else has, in the process showing me how to utilize new powers and abilities I hadn't even known I had by 'awakening' the latent power in my alien blood," Shadow continued, ignoring Sonic. "Quite invigorating, really."

"HE-LOOKS-LIKE-THIS," Omega said helpfully, projecting the image of an alien about the same size as Shadow into the air. He had eyes with black sclera and orange irises and a white muzzle with yellow teeth and no nose. His overall body was black, but he had red marks around his eyes that went over the top of his head and onto his crest, and red tips on the wing-like growths at the sides of his head. A red collar-like growth was present on his upper torso and shoulders, and his forearms were also red with spikes emanating from them. His legs had red markings resembling boots, except that his toes were black; his long tail started out black and then became red, ending in a had three fingers on each hand and two toes on each foot, and also has the scaly skin of most Black Arms.

"Wow. Pretty cool-looking," said an impressed Charmy.

"And not as ugly as most other Black Arms, either," Amy agreed.

"I can see what you mean about him being like you but without the hedgehog DNA. I _do_ see a resemblance," Tails agreed.

"So _that's_ the 'rival better than me?' Hmmph, he doesn't look so tough…" Sonic grumbled, clearly envious. Blaze smirked in amusement.

"Ultimately, after many battles, and despite our best efforts, Black Death and the Duke managed to get all the fragments of the Dark Heart," Rouge went on. "They then tried to betray each other. Surprisingly, the Duke's scheme worked first, and he managed to claim the Heart for himself, mortally wounding Black Death in the process. However, since the Duke's blood lacks the affinity for Demon Imperial Power flowing through mine, he was unable to control the Heart's power, and it went out of control, turning him into a horrible monster."

"Yes, that tends to happen sooner or later in cases like this," Blaze commented.

"Inevitable, really," Sonic agreed.

"Why do they never learn?" Tails lamented.

"Of course, we later learned that Dark Gaia achieved its Perfect form at about the same time, so that might have had something to do with it as well," Shadow added.

"As he died, Black Death revealed he'd only done all the horrible things he'd done because he had been desperate to find a new home for his dying species (well, that and get revenge on me for killing Black Doom), and begged Eclipse—and me—to save what was left of the Black Arms. I agreed, and we incorporated the Black Arms into our forces," Shadow said.

"Wait, what? Why?!" Amy asked. "They were evil aliens who tried to kill you like a bunch of times and take over the world!"

Shadow shrugged. "Several reasons. One, I'm trying not to hold grudges anymore. Two, I'd learned to stop hating the Black Arms after accepting the part of me that's alien and forming a bond with Eclipse, so felt like I should try to save that part of my heritage, since…well, it's not like there are exactly a lot of Robotniks left for me to commiserate with other than Eggman, so they're kind of the only other blood family I've got left. Three, I understand what it's like to want a home of your own. Four, lots of horrible creatures are able to share space in Fangsylvania, even after doing all sorts of nasty things to each other in the past, so even a race of invading aliens have a chance to find a place to belong. Fifth, they had some pretty impressive technology which could be useful in the future, but only those with Black Arms DNA can use it and since it'd be impractical to rely solely on me for it it would be useful to keep a bunch around."

"AND-SIXTH, WE-COULD-PUT-THEM-ON-THE-FRONTLINES-TO-TAKE-THE-BRUNT-OF-ENEMY-ATTACKS-TO-SPARE-OUR-OTHER-TROOPS," Omega said cheerfully.

"That too," Shadow said.

"I thought you said you were trying _not_ to hold grudges. That sounds awfully petty," Amy complained.

" _He's_ trying. I'm not," Rouge said smugly.

"Those poor aliens," Cream said sadly.

"Don't worry, enough of them survived to form a breeding population," Shadow said.

"I thought they reproduced through cloning or something," Sonic said.

"I never said it was a _big_ population," Shadow said.

"As the Duke began to metamorphose into a horrible giant monster, our new joint alliance—made up of not just the monsters on our side, but the Black Arms and many of those who'd once sided with the Duke—marched on the Duke's twisted fortress, and found our way blocked by a massive army of mutated werewolves, warped by the Dark Power and Black Arms science," Rouge said.

"I-LED-OUR-FORCES-TO-VICTORY-OVER-THE-HORDES, CLEARING-THE-WAY-FOR-THE-OTHERS," Omega reported.

"While Omega and the troops kept the Duke's minions occupied, I infiltrated the shattered ruin of his fortress and managed to remove the fragments of the Dark Heart being used to power his cocoon before he could finish his transformation," Rouge explained. "Naturally, this caused him to emerge from his chrysalis as a grotesque unfinished giant monster, but one that was at least killable."

"Been there, done that," Sonic said.

"That _does_ happen an awful lot," Knuckles agreed.

"They really _do_ never learn, do they?" Tails asked.

"Not in my experience, no," Blaze said.

"The three of us then used the power of the Dark Heart to transform into new Super forms, since we didn't happen to have the Chaos Emeralds handy what with a certain SOMEONE running willy-nilly all over the world trying to fix them because he was stupid enough to walk right into an Eggman trap and cause them to lose their charge,," Shadow continued. Sonic glowered at him. "I became the mighty Black Shadow, utilizing the full power of my alien blood. Rouge became Nightwing Rouge, experiencing a taste of the power she would one day wield as Queen of all vampires. And Omega became Alpha-Omega the Destructor, a being capable of annihilating entire countries with his limitless firepower."

"IT-WAS-BEAUTIFUL. I-HAD-SO-MUCH-POWER. IF-ONLY-I-COULD-HAVE-KILLED-MORE-PEOPLE-WITH-IT-WHILE-IT-LASTED," Omega lamented. "HERE-IS-WHAT-WE-LOOKED-LIKE." His eyes lit up, projecting an image of all three members of Team Dark into the air, transformed. Shadow now resembled Eclipse, trading his fur and quills for scales and horns, his muzzle now a mouthless, noseless blank white space beneath smoldering alien red eyes, a third of which had opened on his forehead. (He had not, thankfully, lost his lower body, and had in fact grown a longer tail.) Rouge's fur had turned pitch-black, her wings had enlarged and she'd grown a third pair, all six of which were now not only dark as night but looked like they had stars and galaxies swirling in them, and her mane had grown even longer and shaggier, like her mother's but wilder. Omega's colors had inverted, there was an Alpha symbol on his right shoulder to match the Omega on his left, he'd grown four more massive clawed arms, and a radiant metal halo bristling with heavy firepower was mounted on his back. All three were pulsating with a dark aura and had black bat marks on their chests, and were rocketing skywards towards what looked like some hideous gray and red-furred fusion of dragon, insect, and octopus with five snaking necks ending in snarling, foaming wolf heads with far too many eyes and mouths.

"That's a lot of new Super forms," Knuckles commented, impressed and awed by how beautiful Rouge looked.

"I've had more than that," Sonic said, trying to hide his jealousy. "And I totally did the 'Dark Super Mode' thing first with Darkspines Sonic…"

"Yeah, it's not that special," Amy growled, not even bothering to hide _her_ envy.

"That's an ugly bastard," Vector commented, referring to the mutated Duke.

"Yes, not like any werewolf I've ever heard of," Espio agreed.

"Eh, Cthulhu was worse," Mighty said.

"Your wings were so pretty, Miss Rouge!" Cream squeaked.

"Yes, I kind of miss them…" Rouge said wistfully.

"Looking good, Omega!" Charmy complimented the robot.

"So Dark Power can transform machines as well? Intriguing…" said a fascinated Tails.

"That's certainly a more pronounced transformation than what usually happens when we enter a Super state...then again, considering the different power sources utilized, I suppose it's not much of a surprise," Blaze commented.

"Together, we engaged the transformed Duke in an epic battle in the sky, eventually slaying him at about the same time Sonic and Light Gaia defeated Perfect Dark Gaia, saving Fangsylvania and perhaps the world," Rouge recalled fondly. "Dark Gaia returned to his slumber, causing the levels of Dark Power around the world to drop back to normal. We then returned the Dark Heart to my mother, awakening her from her coma. I was worried she'd be angry at me for letting things get to the state they had, but after she was filled in on everything that had happened, she congratulated me on handling the situation in the way that I did—even if I'd risked my life a little more than she was comfortable with, the results spoke for themselves, and the people loved me for putting my life on the line for them instead of simply sitting in my high tower and letting others do the fighting for me, which would certainly make it easier for them to accept me as their future ruler-assuring me that she wasn't sure she could have done a better job in my place, and offered to let me come home early to begin the next stage of my training. She even offered positions in her court for Shadow and Omega in return for the services they'd rendered to the realm." She shrugged. "Obviously, I turned her down."

"But why?" Cream asked. "Wasn't that what you wanted?"

"It was," Rouge admitted. "But I'd grown rather fond of living in the outside world, and wasn't quite ready to come home yet. After all, my century deadline hasn't come up yet! Although I told Mother it was because I didn't want to break tradition by coming back ahead of schedule, she understood why I was _really_ doing it, and let me come back to your world until I was ready."

"That was very nice of her," Charmy said.

"That wasn't the full extent of her generosity, either," Shadow said. "Both Omega and myself received titles and land confiscated from the Duke and the traitors who sided with him, though we really only own them in name only, since neither of us particularly feels like governing anyone, and left our estates in the hands of capable stewards, though we still receive most of the profits they produce."

"I-OCCASIONALLY-CHECK-IN-ON-THEM-TO-LET-THEM-KNOW-THAT-IF-THEY-ARE-NOT-DOING-A-SATISFACTORY-JOB-I-WILL-DESTROY-THEM," Omega said.

"I've allowed what's left of the Black Arms to settle on my land, since, understandably, the rest of Fangsylvania's a bit leery to have them around," Shadow said. "Although I'm technically their leader now—my transformation into 'Black Shadow' cinched the deal—Eclipse rules them in my absence, and I have my Eye on them to make sure they stay in line."

"Literally. He has a third eye now as a result of the whole 'Black Shadow' thing. Calls it Shadow's Eye. And yes, Mighty, that _was_ his idea," Rouge said with a smirk, causing Shadow to roll his eyes.

"…You have a third eye?! That's so awesome! Can we see?" Charmy asked eagerly.

"No, because it's in Fangsylvania," Shadow said. "It can separate from me, just like Doom's Eye could from Black Doom."

"Did Black Death have an eye, too?" Cream asked.

"Yes, Death's Eye, but it died when he did," Shadow said with what almost sounded like remorse.

"Okay, is it genetic? Is just an alien thing to give yourselves names like that?" Mighty asked. Everyone ignored him.

"Wait, so...why do you still have legs, then?" Amy asked. "If you're the new three-eyed Black Arms leader and all?"

"I-it's complicated, okay?" Shadow mumbled, looking embarrassed. "Let's just leave it at that and move on."

"So anyway, that's what we did during the whole Dark Gaia crisis," Rouge said.

"Wow. Quite the story," said the impressed Tails.

"And I missed out on it!" Sonic lamented.

"You went on an incredible adventure of your own during all that," Blaze pointed out.

"Yeah, but I still feel like I missed out!" Sonic complained.

"The world doesn't revolve around you, Sonic. We can have our own adventures without you whenever we want," Shadow reminded the blue hedgehog bluntly.

"Yeah, yeah, I know…" Sonic grumbled.

"But you're right, it _was_ quite the epic adventure," Shadow admitted. "And if it were ever to be adapted into a story or video game or something like that, it'd probably be called Shadow the Hedgehog 2 or something like that. That's a good name, I think."

Rouge frowned. "Wait, why would it be named after _you?_ It took place in my homeland and revolved around me! The main villain was a longtime nemesis of my family! If anything, it should be called Rouge Adventure!"

"Yes, but it also followed up with the subplot regarding my heritage and choosing what kind of person I want to be from my previous solo adventure and the Black Arms, whom it's already been established I have a connection with, featured prominently as antagonists. Plus, _I_ got a rival and lots of character development, while you did not," Shadow said.

"I got lots of character development!" Rouge protested angrily. "My backstory was revealed to my closest friends, and I learned that I could trust them with my deepest darkest secrets! I had to deal with politics and war and getting over my fear of disappointing my mother and being a strong leader in my own right! It was about me getting that much closer to being worthy of the title of the future Queen of the vampires! Plus, I so _too_ had a rival! Remember Belle?"

"I thought you regarded her as more of a nuisance than an actual rival," Shadow said.

"Well, yes, but still!" Rouge huffed.

"What happened to her, anyway?" Tails asked.

"Oh, she died," Rouge said breezily.

"I-DID-NOT-GET-ANY-CHARACTER-DEVELOPMENT. I-JUST-KILLED-THINGS. I-DID-NOT-GET-ANY-RIVALS-BECAUSE-ALL-MY-ADVERSARIES-DIED-AFTER-THE-FIRST-TIME-I-ENCOUNTERED-THEM. IT-WAS-FUN. THERE'S-LOTS-OF-GREAT-STORIES-AND-GAMES-ABOUT-PROTAGONISTS-WHO-KILL-LOTS-OF-PEOPLE-AND-GET-NO-DEVELOPMENT-WHATSOEVER, SO-I-DON'T-SEE-THAT-AS-A-BAD-THING," Omega said. "WHY-CAN'T-IT-BE-CALLED-OMEGA-ADVENTURE-OR-SOMETHING-LIKE-THAT?"

"Because it wasn't about just you...then again, it wasn't about just Shadow or myself, either," Rouge admitted reluctantly.

"Okay, okay, I'm willing to compromise," Shadow said. "How about Shadow the Hedgehog 2: the Adventures of Team Dark?"

Rouge threw her drink in Shadow's face. Omega grabbed a table and hurled it at the black hedgehog, knocking him over. "I'll take that as a maybe," he said weakly.

"How come you never told us about any of this?" Amy asked.

Rouge shrugged. "You never asked. Plus, I didn't really think I could trust you all with my full backstory at the time."

"But you do now?" Cream asked hopefully.

"Yes, because while I was telling you my story I was subtly using my vampiric hypnosis to plant a suggestion in your subconscious to make sure you'll never tell anyone else about this," Rouge said smugly.

There was a pause as everyone processed this. "… Not cool, Rouge!" Mighty said angrily.

"I feel so violated!" Charmy cried.

"BITCH!" Amy shouted.

"You don't trust us with the truth?" Knuckles asked indignantly.

"Considering how easy it is to trick you into doing just about anything? Yeah, I think this is a safe precaution," Rouge said.

"...Fair enough," Knuckles conceded.

"But what about the rest of us?" Vector demanded.

"You three are so poor I'm fairly certain you'd sell any juicy information just to make a quick buck," Rouge said flatly. "As for the rest of you… You're right, you probably wouldn't tell anyone, but that's a risk I can't take."

"Gee, glad to see how much you value our friendship," Amy grumbled.

"This is as much to protect you as me. There's a lot of people who want me dead, and if they knew that you knew anything important about me, they might try to use you against me," Rouge argued.

"And it also ensures that if any of us are ever captured by said enemies, nothing they can do will make us talk, no matter how hard they torture us," Blaze noted.

"That too," Rouge admitted. "Honestly, I don't see why you're surprised. I thought I'd made it clear that I'm _not_ a hero, or always a very good person. Be thankful I didn't use my powers to plant any _other_ suggestions in your minds."

"How do we know you haven't already?" Tails asked suspiciously.

Rouge grinned. "You don't." Everyone groaned.

"Should we be more upset about this?" Espio asked.

"Eh, to be fair, I kind of expected something like this when she told us she was a vampire," Vector admitted. "She's right, we shouldn't be surprised."

"And aside from that, it's possible she _also_ hypnotized us into being okay with her hypnotizing us," Mighty commented.

"Which might explain why I do not feel any great urge to immolate her for _daring_ to violate the sanctity of my mind," Blaze agreed, a scowl on her face. "Well played, vampire."

"Anyway, if we're willing to forgive Shadow for nearly destroying the world twice and switching sides a ridiculous number of times during the last invasion, I guess this isn't that big a deal," Sonic said with a shrug.

"I don't suppose anyone would be willing to lend me a hand?" Shadow asked weakly from under the table. He was ignored.

"Wait…hypnosis…aha! That explains it! Rouge is always able to steal the Master Emerald from me because she's been hypnotizing me into letting her!" Knuckles declared.

"Actually, no, I've never needed to hypnotize you even once before now," Rouge refuted.

"…Not ever?" Knuckles asked.

"Not ever," Rouge said.

Knuckles sagged. "Oh."

Deciding not to mention that, due to his psychic powers, he'd been able to resist Rouge's hypnotic powers, Silver spoke up. "Thank you for all that, Rouge. It was as much a detailed insight into your psyche and the philosophy of your species as it was a look at your history and what shaped you into the person you are now. It was also a pretty cool story, especially the latter bit, which I would not mind hearing about in greater detail another time. And now, I do believe it's time to interrogate our _other_ immortal incredibly powerful monarch of ambiguous moral quality. Blaze, feel up to telling us your story?"

Blaze sighed. "I had hoped you would save me for later, but… I knew this would happen eventually. Very well, if this is my time, it is my time."

"Are you sure about this, Blaze? You don't have to do this if you don't want to," Sonic said in concern. "I mean, it happened in another dimension, and Eggman Nega can't do anything to affect it… Can he?"

"Perhaps, perhaps not…but just as Rouge believed it necessary to place a geas on us, so too is this is not a risk I am willing to take," Blaze said firmly. She nodded at Silver. "Ask away, time traveler. But be warned: my tale is not short, nor is it for the faint of heart." Cream looked at her friend in concern. She'd always known Blaze's childhood hadn't exactly been a happy one… But just how bad had it been, anyway?

"All right," Silver said. " **Blaze, how did you become queen of your empire?"**

…

Aaaand done! Wow, sorry that took so long. Again. And considering that Blaze is the _next_ one, it might take even longer. As Blaze said, her story isn't a short one.

So, who would you guys like to see give their origin after Blaze? **Cream, Big, Fang, the Babylon Rogues** , or **Sticks?**

Also, please check out the TV Tropes page for this story if you haven't already. Tzening's done a great job, and it's worth looking at.


	8. Blaze's Legend, pt 1

Merry Christmas, everyone! Enjoy your present, another chapter, from me to you!

If there's two things stories written by me are best distinguished by, it's the absurd chapter length, and the exasperating time it takes for me to crank out new ones. And for that, I apologize.

In any event, this chapter is one that has been a long time coming, and one I've been looking forward to writing more than any of the others. Hopefully, it's worth all the hype, and will meet both your expectations and my own. Enjoy.

Also, it takes a lot from another series I'm quite fond of. Let's see if you can figure out what.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me

…

"How I won my kingdom…now there is quite a tale," Blaze mused. "And a long one too, longer than I think there is time for me to tell in its entirety, though I suppose if I only tell the relevant parts that should suffice. A more complete retelling of my story can be done at a later date, if any of you are still interested."

"How long could it be?" asked a confused Knuckles. "Weren't you born to the position or something? That's how it usually works, right?"

"It was for me," Rouge agreed.

"You told me that you were born into the royal family, and had the power to generate and control flames from birth, marking you as future Guardian of the Sol Emeralds, but also led you to be ostracized and teased by the other children," Cream recalled.

Blaze winced. "I…did say that, yes."

"It's not true?" Cream asked, hurt.

"It is!...from…a certain point of view," the cat said lamely.

"In other words, it's a big fat lie," Vector translated.

"Not entirely…" Blaze muttered, looking embarrassed.

"You lied to me?" Cream asked, looking hurt.

Blaze sighed. "Cream, when I told you that, I only knew you for a short while. I'd just met you, I wasn't fully sure I could trust you…and what's more, weren't sure you were mature enough to know the _real_ story, which is a sight more grisly and brutal than what I told you, which is why I still didn't tell you the whole story once I was certain I could consider you a friend."

"But you clearly told Sonic and Tails!" Cream argued.

"Because I felt they were mature enough to handle it, and wasn't sure you could. I…did not want to destroy your innocence, or for you to think less of me," Blaze said uncomfortably.

Cream stamped her foot angrily. "There sure seems to be a lot of 'not wanting to destroy my innocence' going around lately. I'm going to grow up eventually, you know. You all can't keep coddling me forever."

"That's true," Blaze admitted. "But there is also no reason to rush it. Childhood is fleeting, and only comes once. You are, however, more responsible and mature than we sometimes like to admit, and given how well you have—for the most part—handled the stories told so far, I believe you are at last ready to hear mine. Afterwards, you can judge for yourself whether or not I was right to withhold it from you for so long. Know this, however: I did not lie to you with intent to harm, and I was afraid of how you would react if you understood what I _really_ am. I may be the magical ruler of an enchanted kingdom, but the tale of how I got to that point is a lot more bloodied and sordid than most of your fairy tales."

Cream swallowed nervously, recalling how very dark – – Shade's, in particular – – some of the stories she'd heard so far had gotten. "I understand, and I think I get why you wanted to protect me from the truth for as long as you could. I don't like it, but I understand. But… If you're willing to tell me the real story now, then I'm ready to hear it."

Blaze nodded. "Very well. Then I shall begin my tale… Oh, and Amy? I did not start on the streets, selling my body. Just wanted to get that out there."

Amy blushed as the others snickered. "I-I wasn't going to say anything!" She protested.

"I'm sure," Blaze said, sounding as if she was anything but. "It all begins, I suppose, with my first memory… A memory of darkness, and pain…"

…

Darkness. Darkness before her and behind, above and below, stretching out in every direction. Darkness was all that surrounded her, and all that she'd ever known.

All but the pain. A seething, burning sensation, a fire raging within her, screaming to get out, desperate to escape, even if it meant incinerating her body to do so. And Blaze knew that, no matter what, she could not let that fire out. Not only because it would be the death of her, but because it would be the death of many more.

She did not know how long she had been struggling, fighting the fire within her. If there had been a time before this, a time before her eternal war, she could no longer remember it. All she had was the darkness, and the pain, and the inferno HUNGERING to break free from her.

…

"The amnesia angle? Really?" Espio groaned.

"Could you _get_ any more clichéd?" Charmy complained.

"Yeah, bad enough we had to deal with that with Shadow, along with all the other clichés making him up," Vector grumbled.

"I am not cliché!" Shadow protested angrily. Nobody was willing to meet his eye. "I'm _not_!" He insisted.

"That's right, Shadow. You're totally original. Just like every other red and black angst-ridden superpowerful being with a tragic backstory that can be found on the Internet," Sonic joked.

"Go back to deviantART!" Charmy shouted.

"Fuck all of you," Shadow snapped.

"You really don't remember anything before that, Blaze?" Cream asked, alarmed.

Blaze grimaced. "I…recalled a few more things later, but… few of them were very pleasant…I warned you, this wasn't going to necessarily be a nice story…"

"That's so sad…" the rabbit whispered.

"Don't worry, Cream, it gets better," Sonic assured her. He hesitated. "…Eventually." Cream whimpered, not particularly reassured.

"So… What's that fire thing? Sounds kind of scary," Mighty commented.

"A case of extreme heartburn?" Vector joked.

Blaze glared at him. "No, something far worse than that. I'll explain in time. Anyway…"

…

She would not let it break free. She COULD not let it break free. _My soul is alit with flames!_ She thought fiercely. _No fire shall burn me! I shall master it, not the other way around! I will not lose! I CANNOT lose!_

She lost. The flame, without warning, suddenly surged outwards, taking her by surprise and smashing through the defenses she had erected around it over the ages, immolating them within moments thanks to her weakened will. She cried out, the pain that had been her constant companion for as long as she could remember replaced by an unbearable agony, every cell in her body burning with unthinkable, incomprehensible destructive power, making it feel as if she were being taken apart piece by piece on a quantum level, every quark and atom and strand of DNA being consumed by an unquenchable, uncontrollable fire.

Cracks formed all over her body, shafts of baleful light and gouts of flame blazing forth from each crevice and fissure as she desperately struggled to keep her body from disintegrating completely. She opened her mouth to scream, jets of fire bursting forth from her eyes and mouth…

And suddenly, she exploded. Or felt like she did, rather, and the dark void that had been all she had ever known shattered with her, to be replaced by something else… But she didn't get much of a chance to marvel at what being surrounded by something other than blackness was like because she promptly exploded again, and the world shattered to be replaced by something else, and she exploded again, and the world shattered once more, and on and on and on, blasting through world after world after world, her torment increasing with every subsequent explosion, constantly topping and overturning the limits of what she thought she could take. World after world after world flickered past her eyes, and just when she was about to give in, relinquish her last shred of self-control and allow herself to be utterly extinguished…

The flame flared up, ready to explode again… And abruptly sputtered, flickered, and died down to smoldering embers. It had burned too bright too quickly, and was now all but spent. It took several seconds for Blaze to realize this, the shock of suddenly _not_ hurting, of not being torn apart by the flame that had been burning inside her for as long as she could remember, so incredible that she could scarcely believe it. The void shook her, and for a fleeting moment she wanted the pain back, because at least it had been familiar, an old friend as compared to this strange absence.

That emptiness was soon filled by something else: soul-crushing, bone-deep exhaustion which turned her legs to jelly and caused her to fall to her knees, head swimming and vision fading in and out as the effort of keeping the flame in check and being ravaged by it for so long finally caught up to her. _Is this it, then?_ She thought weakly, blood roaring in her ears. _After all that, I'm just going to die?_

Struggling to hold off the darkness swimming at the corners of her vision, she managed, with incredible effort that nearly caused her to simply black out then and there, to raise her head, hoping that she could at least see where she was, to have one last sight other than darkness before the void claimed her once again, possibly for good. Forcing her eyes to focus, she could see that she was at the bottom of a large crater, possibly formed by her arrival into… Wherever she was, and above her were…were…

 _Stars,_ something whispered to her. She did not know how she knew it, how she knew that those beautiful glittering white points in a pitch black sky were stars given that, as long as she could remember, an infinite darkness had been all she had ever known. Ultimately, she didn't care. They were stars, and they were the most wonderful things she had ever seen: miniscule points of light, surrounded by an endless abyss so very much like the one that had been her home for all she could remember, but instead of giving into the night and allowing themselves to be swallowed up by nothingness, they shined brightly, as if in defiance, a proud message not to give in to despair and to continue to strive, even if the entire universe were arrayed against her. A sense of awe and joy unlike anything she had ever before experienced—quite literally—swelled within her heart, and her vision blurred as tears began to fall, as much from her newfound feeling of wonder as her exhaustion. If she were to die now, she thought, it would be with no regrets, for at least she had been granted a glimpse of beauty before she went.

As her eyes closed for what, as far as she knew, might be the last time, she noticed that a group of hooded figures had appeared around the rim of the crater. _I wonder who those might be,_ she thought to herself as she drifted off into the first slumber she'd had in a very, very long time. _I hope they're nice._

Unfortunately for Blaze, they weren't.

…

Everyone stared at Blaze in disbelief for several moments. "Holy crap," Charmy said finally.

"That was… Intense," Rouge said uneasily.

"I'm starting to understand why you weren't sure I was ready to hear this for so long," Cream whimpered timidly.

"Trust me, we're just getting started," Sonic said grimly.

"Blaze, those…those worlds you passed through…when you said they _shattered_ , you didn't…you didn't…" Amy said nervously.

"DESTROY-THEM?" Omega asked eagerly.

Cream gasped. "That's horrible! Blaze would never do that! Right, Blaze?" Blaze did not answer. "B-Blaze?"

Blaze grimaced. "To be honest, Cream… I have no idea."

"There's a very high probability that the 'Shattering' was merely her mind's way of interpreting the rather violent way she was traveling between dimensions," Tails spoke up quickly.

"How high a probability?" Shadow asked seriously.

The Fox hesitated. "… About 50%, give or take," he admitted reluctantly. There was a sharp inhale of breath from just about everyone at that.

"B-but… No! That's not possible!" Amy said desperately. "I mean, yeah, Blaze is… _pretty_ strong," she admitted reluctantly. "But not… Not strong enough to destroy _worlds!_ "

"There is more to me yet than you understand," Blaze said solemnly. "And a reason that one of my titles—of which I've many— is 'Destroyer of Worlds.'"

"I'M-LISTENING," Omega said gleefully.

"As am I," Cream said anxiously.

"I'll get to it. In any event, I'm glad I was able to see that perfect slice of night sky, even if it were for only a few moments," Blaze said wistfully. "The memory would sustain me in the future, because it was the first—and last—nice thing I had to cling to for a very, _very_ long time…"

…

When next Blaze awoke, it was to the sound of chanting. Many voices banded together, speaking words in rising and falling cadence which made no sense to her…but at the same time struck a chord deep within her, filling her with a primal feeling of terror. The flame, which seemed to have regained a small portion of its strength—though not its desire to burn itself out of her—flickered uneasily in reaction to it, and while Blaze supposed that anything which made her internal adversary afraid should be a good thing…somehow it did not reassure her very much, either.

Her eyes opened slowly, head still swimming and groggy from her rather traumatic experience, whatever few hours of sleep she'd managed to glean not quite enough to make up for however long she had spent awake unceasingly doing battle with the flame within her. When she became aware of where she was, however, her eyes snapped open, instantly rising to full alertness, as she realized that being anything other than fully awake might not be a good thing right now.

She was in a cage. A cylindrical cell of bars covered in glowing blue and white runes, rising to a couple of feet over her head and about wide enough that she could sit or lie down in it, but not much else. Thick shackles marked with the same runes were locked around her wrists and ankles, iron chains binding them to the floor and ceiling, with a similar fetter wrapped around her neck. They were thankfully slack enough to grant her freedom of movement, but that didn't make them any less uncomfortable.

The exterior of the cage was no more inviting. She was in a very dark chamber, unable to see too far in the dim light cast by a handful of torches surrounding her. What she _did_ see did not particularly reassure her, given that the ground surrounding her cage was covered in an incredibly complex latticework of lines, runes, glyphs, and sigils which made her head hurt, and standing just outside of that were a ring of cloaked figures, their faces obscured by their hoods, the source of the eerie, dread-inducing chanting. "Wh-what…where am I? What is going on?!" She cried, understandably panicking.

…

"Well, that's a fine wake-up call," Mighty murmured.

"Were you captured by some cult who intended to use you as part of some arcane ritual to destroy the world? You wouldn't believe how many times that's happened to me," Shadow interjected.

Everyone blinked and stared at the black hedgehog in surprise. "Wait, seriously?" asked a surprised Tails.

Shadow nodded. "Oh yeah, happens all the time. Just like there's tons of prophecies about Sonic saving the world, you wouldn't _believe_ how many there are saying that I'm supposed to destroy it."

"AND-NONE-ABOUT-ME," Omega complained. "NOT-FAIR."

"Something like that happened to me once, actually" Vector recalled vaguely. "I woke up one morning with a killer headache and found myself being held captive by some nuts trying to use me to revive the great Egyptian deity Sobek or something…I'm not sure how it happened, but I think I drank too much the night before while chatting up a girl who may or may not have been working for them."

"Like that's new," Espio muttered, rolling his eyes.

"They didn't intend to use me to destroy the world," Blaze said. "Quite the opposite, actually…"

…

The ring of figures parted, and another one stepped forward, stopping at the edge of the complex markings. By the ornateness of his cloak and the quality of his jewelry and adornments, it was clear that he was the leader of this sinister cabal. "So, you are awake at last. I was not certain that you would wake before we were finished. It might have been better for you if you hadn't."

"Wh-what's going on? Where am I?! Let me out!" Blaze shouted, frantically pulling at her chains, something deep within her soul—the flame?—telling her that something very, _very_ bad was going to happen if her captors finished whatever they were doing.

The figure shook his head. "For the sake of the world, we shall not."

"What do you mean?!" Blaze demanded, equal parts furious and frightened.

"Are you Blaze, Queen of Demons, Chiefest of Calamities, Archfiend of the Abyssal Planes, Flames of Disaster, Avatar of Iblis, and Destroyer of Worlds?" The figure asked.

Blaze started. "What? What are you talking about? My name is Blaze, yes-" _Now how do I know that, when I recall nothing else?_ "But I'm not a-"

 _Gutted, broken towers rose from the boiling sea of fire, connected by jagged, shattered roads and highways. Dark clouds filled the skies, shielding the world from the sunlight. Terrible creatures of molten rock and fire roamed the ruined city, flying through the air and stalking along the rubble and devastated buildings. A great beast, larger than all the others, made of fire and stone and darkness, lorded over this hellish realm, reveling in the destruction and chaos it had caused…_

 _And that beast was herself._

Blaze snapped back to the present, realizing, to her horror, that the figure was right. Partially, anyway. She _was_ a demon, or at least had a demonic nature, and she _had_ ruled that awful place—or at least, part of her did- and… And she really _did_ have the power to destroy worlds, if she so chose. _Was this why I was alone in the dark?_ She wondered, shocked. _To keep myself away from everyone, so that I would harm nobody else?_

…

Everyone stared at Blaze, shocked. "You're a demon?!" Asked a stunned Mighty.

"No way! I mean, I've been calling you a she-bitch and succubus behind your back for ages, but I never imagined that you actually _were_ one!" Amy cried.

"Wait, what?" Sonic asked, glaring at the pink hedgehog.

"Nothing," she said quickly.

"Come to think of it, you _do_ have a bit of a demonic air about you…" Rouge murmured, intrigued.

"Should we be more surprised by this?" Charmy wondered. "I mean, we just learned Tails is a result of a science experiment and Sonic's speed was an unexpected byproduct, Knuckles is the immortal descendent of a race of complete assholes, Rouge is a vampire and future secret ruler of the world, and Shadow's the ruler of an alien species."

"Don't forget Cream apparently being the immortal ruler of all Chao," Sonic added.

Charmy nodded in agreement. "Yeah, after all that, hearing that Blaze is a demon isn't too big a stretch in comparison."

"Kid's got a point," Vector agreed.

"Yeah, I was kind of expecting something like this by now," Espio agreed.

"And there's the whole fire thing. Makes sense," Shadow added.

"N-no! That can't be!" Cream cried in denial. "Demons are horrible, nasty, evil creatures! A-and you…you _aren't_ , Blaze! You're…you're strong, and brave, and compassionate…"

Blaze smiled and ruffled Cream's hair affectionately. "I thank you for your faith in me, Cream. I assure you it isn't misplaced…however, that doesn't change the fact that I _am_ a demon. Or part-demon, anyway."

"How's that work?" Asked Knuckles.

"Well, in my experience, when a demon and a mortal fall in love very much-" Rouge began, deciding not to mention that oftentimes such love was rather one-sided – or, even more often, _no_ -sided – since Cream was listening.

"No, it's not like that," Blaze interrupted. "It's a little complicated. It will be explained eventually." She sighed. "I rather wish that the people that day had been more like Cream, open and willing to believe in others, and not…well…"

"But what was that about you having the power to destroy worlds? There's no way you can actually do that, can you?" Mighty asked.

Blaze pursed her lips. "I…can, actually," she admitted.

Everyone who did not already know this recoiled. "Whoa, seriously?!" Vector cried.

"No way! Show us!" Charmy dared her.

"YES, SHOW-US!" Omega agreed.

Everyone stared at them. "You…do realize if she destroyed the world right now, you'd die too, right?" Shadow said slowly.

"Oh. Right," the bee said in embarrassment.

"IT-WOULD-BE-WORTH-IT," Omega insisted.

"You can really destroy worlds?" Rouge asked, impressed. "Even when I get the Dark Heart and ascend to the throne, I won't be strong enough to do _that_. Well, not easily, anyway."

"It's not easy for me, either," Blaze said. "I can't just snap my fingers and blow up a planet. I need to make certain…preparations first. Preparations I will never make, because I have no intention of _ever_ blowing up a planet."

"Well, that's a relief," Shadow said. "I'd rather you not destroy this world, most of my things are here. Well, what's not on the ARK, anyway."

"I'd be fine if you blew up the world. After all, Angel Island isn't on it!" Knuckles bragged.

Everyone stared at him like he was an idiot. "You…do realize the explosion would be big enough to destroy your island, right?" Sonic said slowly.

"And even if it didn't, you'd very quickly suffocate in space because your island doesn't have enough mass to attract an atmosphere," Tails added.

"I'd just use the Master Emerald to put a force field around the island to protect me!" Knuckles said, unconcerned.

"The same Master Emerald you accidentally break on an almost hourly basis?" Espio pointed out.

Knuckles hesitated at this. "… Ah."

"Are we really just going to gloss over this?! She's a demon who can destroy the world!" Amy shouted. "And _totally_ unfit to date Sonic!" Everyone else groaned and rolled their eyes.

" _Part_ demon. And just because I _can_ destroy it doesn't mean I _will_ ," Blaze emphasized. She sighed wearily. "Something I wish they had been willing to believe…"

…

"It's not… It's not what you think," she said frantically, her words pathetic even to her own ears. "I…I think I _am_ who you think I am, at least in part, but… I mean you no harm! I don't want to destroy your world, or any others! I just want to be free, and live in peace!"

"Which is exactly something an evil world ending demon _would_ say to try and save herself from being banished from this plane," the figure sneered.

"I'm not lying!" Blaze cried desperately. "Please, let me go!"

"So that you might bring ruin to our world? I think not," the figure said haughtily. He gestured, and the torches around them flared up, sparks flying to ignite other sconces and torches around the chamber, illuminating the room and revealing…

Blaze. As the confused and frightened feline turned around and around as much as her chains would allow her in dismay and disbelief, her own face looked back at her again and again. Great statues of herself rose from the floor and towered to the ceiling, expressions of unimaginable cruelty and savagery on their faces as they callously stood or sat upon thrones and pedestals of skulls, bones, and wailing children, with a simply massive graven idol extending from the back wall, a look of utmost greed on her face as her massive claws stretched out to grab at whatever was before her. The walls were covered in images of her committing countless atrocities; burning cities to the ground, slaughtering armies by the millions, commanding legions of horrors similar to the ones Blaze had just seen in her vision, forcing a chained and despairing populace to kneel before her, and ripping entire worlds apart. The only thing that slightly marred the shocking tableau was a stuffed alligator dangling from the ceiling for some reason. "I-I don't understand…what…what is this?" She whispered in confusion and horror.

"We have made no mistake," the figure explained. "For hundreds, _thousands_ of years we have known of your coming. Prophecies have warned us of you for untold ages, since before the dawn of civilization. Every culture, society, and species has legends and stories about you and the terror you will bring. Stories about how you will tear down the world as we know it, and leave something completely unrecognizable in its place. How you will utterly destroy all who stand against you. How you will bring death to untold billions, until the soil is turned red from the blood of your victims. Parents tell their children to behave, or else you'll come to kill them in the night, and desperately hope that they aren't accidentally telling the truth."

"No…" Blaze whispered in denial, struggling to comprehend, to find some way to refute, what she was seeing. "I would…I would _never_ do that! Any of that!"

 _Or at least, not anymore,_ some part of her whispered.

"For countless millennia, my order has been tasked with watching for the signs of your arrival, so that when you finally entered our world, we would not be caught off-guard," the figure continued, as if she had not spoken. "The gods must have smiled on us, for we were fortunate enough to find you when you were at your weakest, no doubt worn out from the effort of traveling between realities, or perhaps from destroying the last world you visited!"

"I didn't destroy it!" Blaze said frantically. _At least, I really really REALLY hope I didn't…_

"It matters little, so long as we make sure you don't destroy _this_ world," the figure said with a shrug. "Since I am uncertain we are capable of killing you permanently, and we do not know the coordinates of your plane of origin-"

"Wouldn't do you any good anyway, it's not there anymore," Blaze muttered, then blinked in surprise, wondering how she knew that. _Did I destroy my homeworld?!_

…

"Just to be clear, I _didn't_ destroy it," Blaze said quickly, before anyone could say anything. "The reason it didn't exist anymore was…well, I'll get to it later."

…

"We cannot return you to where you came from. Not that we would anyway," the figure said with a hint of malice. "After all, if we did that, what would stop you from simply following your trail right back here? No, we shall send you somewhere else instead…a proper place for a fiend such as yourself, but one which I guarantee you will find far from…pleasant."

"No! You can't!" Blaze cried in horror. The flame, responding to her emotions, flared up, desperate to avoid being imprisoned again. She could feel its power flowing through her, and was frightened enough that she was willing to _allow_ it, instead of fighting it this time…

And suddenly the runes on her chains and bars flashed, and she felt as if a wet, heavy blanket had been dropped onto her, soaking her from head to toe and snuffing out her fire before she could call upon its power. "Wh-what? What did you-"

"You didn't think we'd make it _that_ easy, did you?" The figure sneered. "I told you, we've been waiting a _long_ time, more than enough to prepare. Every bit of your cell is made from deepstone, a material that can only be found in the deepest reaches of the ocean, and so retains some of its watery properties, including the ability to suppress fire magic. The seams are mystically bonded to prevent any of the bars or links from being removed. The runes are spells of binding and suppression which work to constantly weaken and contain you while simultaneously reinforcing each other so they will never falter or weaken or fail. They are _also_ spells of preservation, which means you will be kept in the same physical state you are now, so you can't escape by killing yourself and reincarnating outside…or simply wish to end it all and die. The _only_ way to unlock the cage is with a single key, which we have already broken into a dozen pieces and randomly hurled into other worlds. Once we've finished banishing you, we shall kill ourselves, and since the spell we're using to get rid of you was never written down but memorized…once you're gone, nobody will _ever_ be able to bring you back." He considered for a moment. "I suppose some might call it overkill to keep you imprisoned in a cage while you're banished to another dimension, but given how dangerous you are, I think it's an acceptable level of precaution."

…

Everyone stared at Blaze, horrified. "That's… That's insane!" Said an incredulous Mighty.

"Most of the sealed evils we fight aren't imprisoned so thoroughly," Espio noted.

"Or so cruelly," Cream said, shivering in revulsion. "I don't understand. How could they do that to you? You weren't a monster! You weren't evil! You didn't deserve any of that!"

"In their eyes, I did," Blaze pointed out. "All their lives, they'd been told that I was a horrible monster who deserved not even a shred of mercy and needed to be dealt with as harshly as possible to ensure the world would keep turning."

"Which doesn't even remotely excuse it," Shadow snarled, understanding such fear and prejudice from experience.

"No. No, it doesn't," Blaze agreed.

Knuckles frowned, struck by a troubling thought. "Do… Do you suppose that was the case with a lot of the other ancient evil things we've fought over the years? Like, maybe they actually weren't so bad back in the day, but everyone was scared of them and locked them up for no reason?"

Amy snorted. "No way! If that were the case, then why do all of them try to destroy the world almost the minute someone lets them out?"

"The same reason I did. Because they were so angry for their wrongful imprisonment, and so in pain for all the suffering and isolation they've endured over the years, they wanted to make the whole world pay for what was done to them," Shadow said bitterly.

There was an uncomfortable silence as everyone considered this. "That…is actually a pretty good summation of Chaos, too," Tails said, unnerved. "Could… _could_ more of those guys have actually been decent once, but warped by their eons of imprisonment?"

"Even if they were mistreated by the peoples of ancient times, I don't see that as a good enough excuse for them to hurt the people in the present day," Sonic said firmly. "I don't care _how_ big a sob story they've got, they try to hurt the people I care about, then I'll stop them, one way or another." He paused, then added, "if I can help them, I will. If I can't, or they refuse, then, well…" He shrugged. The others nodded, admitting he had a point.

"So how did you get out of that? I mean, you must've, or you wouldn't be here now, right?" Vector asked, getting them back on track.

"Oh! I know! If there was an order dedicated to sealing you away, then that means there must also be in order who worshipped you and wanted you to destroy the world! That's how it usually works, right?" Charmy asked.

Rouge nodded. "Yes, quite a lot of ancient world-ending horrors have groups dedicated to keeping them contained as well as ones trying to free them. Happens all the time."

"Then did one of those show up at the last minute to save you and spare you a horrible fate?" Cream asked hopefully.

Sonic and Tails winced. Blaze sighed wearily. "If only…"

…

"That's horrific!" Blaze gasped.

"It's no less than you deserve," the hooded figure said callously.

"What I deserve?! But I haven't done _any_ of the things you attribute to me!" Blaze protested. _Well, not in this world, anyway…_ "I haven't done any of the, the atrocities you seem so certain I'll commit, nor do I have any intention of committing them! I just want to live in peace, and go my own way!"

"Even if you haven't done them yet, you probably will eventually," the figure said with an indifferent shrug. "Better to nip it in the bud now, before it's too late."

"But that's…! You can't just condemn me for a crime I haven't even _done_ yet!" Blaze protested desperately.

"I can, and I have," the figure said, turning away from her. "Farewell, Blaze. We won't meet again. I hope you find your new home unpleasant, we took great care in selecting it for you."

"No, please!" Blaze cried desperately as the figure walked away, his chanting brethren closing ranks behind him. "Please, I beg of you, don't do this!" she screamed as the chanting increased in volume and intensity until she had to yell to be heard over it. "I'll do anything you want? Please, let me out! Please! PLEA-"

There was a blinding flash of light from the spell pattern surrounding her cage. Blaze cried out in agony as the runes on her cell flared, magic searing through her body and causing the flame to writhe in torment. She clenched her eyes shut and ground her teeth, struggling to remain conscious, telling herself that it wasn't nearly as bad as the torture she had suffered while being burned alive from within during her involuntary jaunt across dimensions…

And then…

And then…

The pain stopped, and suddenly the temperature rose considerably. Blaze didn't have a problem with heat normally—having a natural affinity with flame helped considerably- but this was uncomfortably hot, even for her.

And were those… Screams she heard?

Cautiously, Blaze opened her eyes…and found she was no longer in that sinister temple. Which was a shame, because as ominous as that place had been, she'd have taken it—hell, she'd even have returned to the void!—to the place she was now in.

Her cage was perched atop a pillar of rock rising from a great sea of molten rock and fire extending as far as the eye could see, monstrous forms swimming and writhing about as millions of smaller figures twisted and cried out and _burned_. The sky above her was not a sky at all but a _ceiling_ , with spires of rock lowering from the stony canopy to meet with equally large pillars jutting out of the lava, creating columns hundreds of miles tall, implying she was in some sort of gigantic cavern, but one so big she couldn't see where it began or ended. Perhaps it didn't.

Elegant spires that went on to infinity acted as filters for the endless billows of smoke spurting from the lava sea or vents on the sides of the giant columns, keeping the upper levels of the cavern clear of it. A windmill of the damned spun and spun, glowing in dazzling, albeit haunting, colors. Castles of stone that danced with the fire floated here and there amidst levitating landmasses and monstrous creatures vast enough to be continents, because they were every bit a demon as they were a structure, ergo alive.

Every second frail, shriveled, blackened figures materialized from thin air in the highest reaches and plummeted, screaming, into the sea, where they started screaming even louder as the flames burned at them…unless something else got to them first, snatching them out of the air before they even reached the fire, though that did not necessarily mean they were being spared, oh no, if anything burning in the sea of flame might have been far preferable for what these other denizens of the cavern had in store for them.

And what denizens they were! Creatures with bodies that were hunched over, worn out from their timeless duties, but still going strong. Some were humanoid, with pitchforks that shoveled souls—for that was, of course, what the wailing, falling figures were-like hay in the less alien parts of hell. Others were far stranger. There were giant tentacled thousand eyed starfish-like creatures that clung to the spires and dunked souls trying to escape the lava like clockwork or some demented game of whack-a-mole, where it always won. Fish-headed quadrupeds with bear claws prowled about the land masses and shores of the great towers, sniffing out any soul that escaped and dragging them back to their prisons in the castles, where the screaming never ended, not even for a second. A skinny watcher of the windmill that could barely stand from its sheer age stood at the base of the demonic structures, the blades—made of still-living skin, flayed from the souls and stitched together-sped up and slowed down from its ever-present grip on a lever.

Occasionally a soul would seem to vanish into thin air, but whether that meant they somehow escaped or simply disintegrated when the suffering finally became too much for them was unclear. The torturers didn't seem to care. There were always more souls to take their place.

Blaze slumped to her knees and stared out at this landscape of horrors in wordless despair, tears streaming down her cheeks and screams filling her ears as she realized she was in Hell, and one that made the horrendous realm that she had once called home seem a heaven in comparison.

...

Everyone stared Blaze in horrified disbelief. "Holy fuck," Charmy said finally.

"Did… Did they send you to _hell?!_ " Asked a stunned Mighty.

"No," Blaze said softly, lost in reminiscence. "They sent me to _a_ hell." Sonic quietly put a hand on her shoulder, and she shot him a grateful look.

"…There's more than one?!" Asked an incredulous Knuckles.

"Certainly. There's hundreds, thousands of dimensions, planes, universes, and realms out there that can be classified as 'hells,'" Rouge said. "Just as there are countless places that could be considered heavens, and even more worlds that count as neither. The multiverse is a big place, after all. More than enough room for any kind of reality under the sky. More than enough room for any kind of sky, at that." She frowned thoughtfully. "I'm not positive which hell Blaze landed in, though. From the sounds of it, it shares similarities with quite a few I know of. There are a _lot_ that have that same aesthetic. You'd expect more variety…then again, you'd be surprised by how many demons out there lack any sort of creativity whatsoever. Good thing they've got mortals to learn it from, you guys are _great_ at inventing new ways to do horrible things to each other."

"Gee, thanks," Mighty said.

"Humans and Mobians are the real monsters," Vector said philosophically. He paused for a moment. "Well, aside from the _actual_ monsters. And other indescribable horrible things that want to destroy us. And…hmm. That made more sense in my head…"

"And just how many hells _do_ you know of?" Espio asked.

"Quite a few. Like my mother said, it might come in handy to know how to get out of a place like that if I should ever find myself there… Because let's be honest, how likely is it that I'm going to get into heaven on my own merits?" Rouge asked.

"I don't think you're evil enough to wind up in a place like that, Rouge," Tails said.

Rouge chuckled. "That's sweet, kid, but we both know that doesn't necessarily mean I'm good enough to wind up in heaven, either. Well, until I break in, of course. Should make for a good challenge…anyway, Blaze, I don't suppose you happen to know the name or coordinates of the place you wound up in?"

"I do not," Blaze said harshly. "I spent far too long there. Why would I ever wish to know how to return?"

"Fair enough," Rouge conceded. "Thought I'd ask."

"I… I don't believe it…" Amy whispered, aghast. "They really… They really threw you to hell? I mean…I hate you, I mean, _really_ hate you for stealing Sonic from me, but…I…even I don't think you deserved that…"

"How… How could they?" Cream whispered, tears in her eyes, clutching a similarly crying Cheese. "You… You didn't do anything to them. You didn't deserve that. You didn't deserve that at all! You're… You're GOOD, Blaze, no matter what you say about yourself! How… How could they do that?! How could that happen?!"

"The same way my home could be invaded, the people I love killed or imprisoned, and myself sealed away for 50 years while the man I considered my father went insane and made plans to use me to destroy the entire planet for revenge," Shadow said grimly. "Good things happen to bad people sometimes. Sometimes very, _very_ bad things." Cream looked shellshocked at this revelation, her naïve worldview taking another heavy hit.

"What… What _happened_ to you there?" Vector asked nervously.

Blaze tensed. Sonic grabbed her hand and gave her a searching look. She gave him a brief smile, but shook her head, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said, "Nothing."

The others gave her confused looks. "NOTHING?" Omega asked.

Blaze shook her head. "Nothing. Remember, I'm demonic in nature. The other demons thought I was one of their own, so didn't lay a finger on me."

The others relaxed slightly. "Oh! Well… That's not good, but it's better than I feared," Amy said in relief.

"Not really," Blaze said bitterly. "When I said nothing happened, I _mean_ nothing happened. At all. I sat there in that cage, all alone, surrounded by uncounted horrors and suffering, unable to do anything, ignored by everything outside, for a very, _very_ long time. At least Shadow had the luxury of being able to sleep through pretty much the entirety of his sentence. I wasn't nearly as lucky."

"Oh," Amy said, looking uncomfortable. She wasn't the only one.

"Wait, what about the demons? While I imagine they weren't exactly the best company, couldn't you have asked them for help? Or at least for conversation?" Espio asked.

Blaze snorted. "That would've required them to be intelligent enough to string two words together. The demons of that place were not like the demons you're probably imagining. They weren't cunning, cruel, sinister creatures bent on inflicting pain and suffering for their own amusement, they were more like… Well, automata."

"Huh? What do cars have to do with anything?" Asked the confused Knuckles.

"Automata, not automobiles," Tails corrected the echidna. "She's saying they were more like robots than thinking creatures."

"I-AM-A-ROBOT-AS-WELL-AS-A-THINKING-CREATURE!" Omega said indignantly.

"A basic Eggman robot, not a sophisticated android like you," Tails said quickly.

"AH. PROCEED," Omega said.

"I don't understand. What do you mean, they were like robots?" Mighty asked. "What, were they robot demons or something? Is that a thing? Is there a robot hell out there?"

"I think so, but I don't believe that's what she means," Rouge said.

"ROBOT-HELL? IF-I-HAVE-A-SOUL, DOES-THAT-MEAN-I-WILL-GO-THERE-SOMEDAY?" Omega asked, disturbed.

"Quite likely, unless you decide to stop killing and destroying things for fun," Espio said.

"… BUT-I- _LIKE_ -KILLING- AND-DESTROYING-THINGS-for-FUN," Omega complained.

"The place I was in… Imagine the universe was made of clockwork. The motion of planets, the burning of stars, the flow of souls from life to death and back again governed by machinery more fine, intricate, and complex than anything you could possibly imagine," Blaze explained. "The realm I was sent to could be considered a sort of… Soul recycling facility. A place where the spirits of the dead go to after death, so that the impurities and taint they picked up from the material world can be scrubbed away so that they could ascend, purified, to the next stage on the wheel of eternity. The demons were basically drones programmed to clean the souls, like the machinery in the carwashes of your world."

"I've never seen any carwash machinery that looked anything like _that_ ," Vector noted sardonically.

"I don't know, maybe for a car it would actually be super painful? I mean, I imagine it would hurt a lot of _we_ were ran through it…" Amy said.

"Vector's got a point. If it's just a big fancy place to purify souls, why would it look so… Well, hellish?" Shadow asked.

"A couple of reasons. One is that not all souls go to the same place for cleansing. The place I was sent to could be considered a more heavy-duty facility where more intensive measures are required to remove the accumulated filth gained from a lifetime of sin and moral fallacy, hence the cleaners would need to be more…brutal in their methods to properly purify the souls. The other reason…" Blaze shrugged. "Such places are shaped by belief. Many people believe, on some level, that there is a horrible place out there where you go after you die if you've been very bad, and very awful things will happen to you there. And so the realm took on the appearance of such a place, because so many were convinced that was where they'd wind up."

Rouge nodded in understanding. "Collective belief can be a very powerful force in some planes. Is it any wonder so many entities we classify as 'divine' demand we believe in them to give them power?"

"Wait, are you saying that the only reason people go to hell is because they think they do and it's the same with heaven?" Asked a confused and alarmed Mighty.

The bat shook her head. "It's a bit more complicated than that. What you actually find wherever you go _does_ depend to some extent on what you believe, though."

"How the heck did your family learn all this stuff, anyway? I mean, given how hard it is for any of you to even _die_ ," Vector complained.

"Oh, lots of us have died. That doesn't mean we've stayed that way," Rouge said. "For many of us, death is less of a final rest and more like a short nap."

"So, basically, the demons didn't help you because they weren't programmed to," Shadow said to Blaze, getting them back on track.

"WORTHLESS-CONSUMER-MODELS," Omega said scornfully.

"Pretty much, yeah. And even if they were smart enough, there wouldn't have been anything they could do anyway. My cage was unbreakable, remember? Only the key could open it, and the order that banished me certainly wasn't stupid enough to send a piece to the same realm I was in," Blaze said. "Which meant that, for the length of my imprisonment, it was just me and the flame inside me… And trust me when I say it wasn't the best conversationalist. Not until afterwards, anyway."

"What exactly _is_ this flame thing, anyway?" Amy asked.

"I'll get to it later," Blaze said.

"How… How long were you there, all alone, with nothing but the screams of the damned for company?" Espio asked uneasily.

Blaze tensed. "Blaze, you don't have to-" Sonic said quickly.

"No, if they want to know, I'll tell them." She took a deep breath. "You are all aware, I'm sure, of places where time doesn't flow the same as everywhere else?"

"Oh, you mean the whole 'year outside, hour inside' thing?" Amy asked, relaxing slightly.

"Essentially, yes," Blaze said.

"So… It was a while, but it wasn't really that long, or at least didn't seem that way to you?" Cream asked hopefully.

Blaze shook her head. "Oh no, on the contrary. A long time passed on the outside world… And an even _longer_ time passed for me in the place I was in."

There was a long silence. "How long, exactly?" Shadow asked cautiously.

"Approximately 500,000 years passed in the outside world. Where I was… Well, actually, it wasn't exactly easy to tell time, but I would estimate…Eight times ten-to-the-ten-to-the-fifty-six years, give or take a few billion," Blaze said quietly.

There was another, even longer, silence. "Um. How long is that, exactly?" Charmy asked uncomfortably.

"That's at least eight times older than the known universe," Tails said.

"… Jesus fuck," said a stunned Mighty.

"… Is that a lot?" Knuckles asked uncertainly. "That sounds like a lot."

"It is," Tails said.

"Like, how much?" Knuckles asked.

"Okay, take the longest span of time you can imagine…" Tails said.

"All right," Knuckles said, not wanting to admit anyone that he couldn't really imagine that long.

"Now forget that because the timespan we're talking here is so ridiculously long that even most of the beings we'd call 'immortal' wouldn't live to see even a fraction of it," Tails said.

"Oh," said Knuckles. He paused. "That is a very long time."

"Yes, it is," the Fox agreed.

"Holy… I can't… I can't even comprehend that," said a dazed Vector. "It's just too big. I can't picture it."

"Most people can't. The mind is only so finite, after all," Rouge said, mind reeling.

"EVEN-MY-SUPERIOR-ROBOT-BRAIN-IS-HAVING-DIFFICULTY-CALCULATING THAT," Omega said.

"Th-that's…I…I can't…" Cream stammered, horrified.

"You certainly don't LOOK that old," Espio said dubiously.

"My cage had preservation spells in it, remember? To keep me in the same state I was in when I was banished, so I couldn't do anything like kill myself or worry about dying from thirst or starvation or anything like that?" Blaze reminded him. She frowned. "That, or I'm just that immortal. I'm not entirely certain which it is."

"How the hell did you not go insane?!" An astonished Shadow demanded. "Isolated and completely alone, surrounded by horrors for that long…"

"Oh, I did go insane," Blaze said in a brittle tone of voice. "Several times. But I was there for so long that even insanity ran its course and I became sane again until the next wave of madness came on. I actually came to look forward to the moments of insanity, because then I could forget where I actually was." She started trembling. "More times than I can count, I hallucinated that somehow I was able to get free, or was rescued, and had a long and happy life with lots of adventures and friendship or romance in a bright and colorful world far removed from the pit I was in… Only to eventually wake up and find myself right back where I started, and for my heart to break and to experience even deeper levels of despair." She hesitated for moment, and when she spoke again, there was almost no trace of the strong, confident Queen they'd come to know, but a woman disillusioned and broken more times than she could count. "There are some days where I wake up, and for a moment I'm afraid that all this is just another hallucination, and that I'm right back in that cage again. That hell is all there ever has been or ever will be."

There was another long silence as everyone processed this, stunned. " _Fuck,_ " Charmy said, incredulous.

"Wow. That got dark all of a sudden," Vector commented.

"Welp, looks like someone's finally topped you for worst backstory," Mighty said weakly to Shadow.

"It's not a competition," the black hedgehog snarled half-heartedly.

"And the guys who did this to you thought YOU were evil?!" Asked an enraged Rouge.

Cream suddenly burst into tears and hugged Blaze, shouting, "No, Blaze, no! This isn't a hallucination! Th-this is real, _we're_ real! You're free of that horrible place, and you're never going back there again!"

Blaze smiled gratefully and hugged the rabbit back. "Thank you for saying that, Cream. I know you're right, but… I was there for a very long time. Far longer than I've been out. Sometimes it feels like I'll never truly be free of it… But so long as I've got people to care about like you, I can bear it. I can bear anything."

"You aren't alone, Blaze. Whenever you feel lost, remember, we've got you," Sonic said gently, taking her hands.

"I know, beloved," Blaze said with a smile. "You always do." The two of them kissed, and even Amy found herself willing to let it go just this once.

"To say that was a terrible ordeal you had to go through would be an understatement. I'm sorry it happened, and I'm glad it's over," Espio said solemnly.

"The fact that you were able to survive all that with even a modicum of sanity… I have to say, Blaze, I'm not sure the rest of us could have come out of that experience as strong as you seem to have become," Shadow said. "Not even me."

"Trust me, I'm not quite as put together as I might seem. I'm just good at putting up a good front, though a few thousand years of routine therapy has helped quite a bit," Blaze said. She made a face. "Even so, I'm still a lot more vulnerable than I care to admit. A while back, there was this one psychic who was able to get into my head and convince me that the last few hundred years of my life had been nothing more than another hallucination, and that I was still in that hell, and had never escaped. I was…pretty messed up by it. It took me a while to recover. It was weeks before I could even leave my room again."

"That's… That's awful!" Amy cried, aghast. "What kind of sick bastard would do something like that?!"

"Nobody who's still alive. My daughter tortured him to death over the course of several years while I was in recovery. It sent a pretty clear message to my enemies that there are some lines they'd better damn well _not_ cross," Blaze said.

"… A part of me feels like I should be horrified, but the rest feels like I should be congratulating her," Knuckles confessed.

"Yeah, I felt the same way when I first heard about it," Sonic confessed. "To be honest, I think if I'd been there when it happened, I… Might have broken my rule against killing things that aren't robots or monsters or the like. There are some lines you just don't cross. Ever." He paused for a moment, then admitted, "To be honest, I think I might have done the same if I ever ran into the guys who did this to Blaze to begin with. They may have claimed they were protecting their world, but that was just _evil_."

Blaze nodded. "Publicly, I reprimanded and punished her once I found out, of course… That sort of thing can't be tolerated by anyone in my kingdom, not even from the Royal family… But secretly, I was very proud of her, and she knew it, even if I didn't tell her in so many words."

"I approve. Honey sounds like a devoted daughter, to do something like that. I know I would do the same thing if someone did something that awful to my mother," Rouge said.

"But that's horrible!" Cream protested.

Rouge nodded. "Oh, most definitely. But Cream… If someone hurt your mother, and I mean _really_ hurt them, don't you think you might be willing to do whatever was necessary to make it right, no matter how awful? Even if it went against everything you stood for?"

Cream faltered at that. "I… Well, I don't…" Her brow creased in uncertainty. Cheese squealed in concern and tugged on her ear, but she was so lost in thought she didn't notice. "I don't know…"

"Well, I pray you never have to find out," Blaze said. "To know the full extent of what you might be willing to do for a loved one, it…can sometimes be pretty soul-shocking. The depths to which I would go for the sake of my daughter, or the other people I care about, sometimes frighten me."

"You might even be willing to kill a whole world," Shadow said softly in reminiscence.

"Or worse," Rouge said.

"What could be worse than killing the whole world?" A confused Knuckles asked.

"You'd be surprised. You're probably better off not knowing," Rouge said.

"Given that you aren't currently trapped in that realm now, I assume you were somehow able to escape," Silver spoke up, the first time he'd said anything in quite a while. "How did you do it?"

"She didn't escape, someone freed her," Tails spoke up.

"And she'll always have my gratitude for it," Blaze said fondly.

"And mine," Sonic said.

"Who did it?" Cream asked, already feeling grateful to whoever saved her friend.

Sonic chuckles and clapped Tails on the shoulder. "My little pal's girlfriend!"

Tails flushed. "S-Sonic!"

Shadow frowned. "Wait a minute…Tails' girlfriend was alive back then?"

"Yes, she's one of my oldest friends," Blaze said. She paused for a moment, and then admitted, "Actually, she _is_ my oldest friend."

"But… If she's been around for that long, I mean, like, hundreds if not thousands of years, isn't there a bit of an age discrepancy between her and Tails?" Mighty asked uneasily.

"A what?" Knuckles asked.

"He means that Tails' girlfriend is a _lot_ older than him," Rouge clarified.

Knuckles blinked. "Oh. So what? I mean, I'm a lot older than you, right? Er, at least, I think I am… Pretty sure you were born a while _after_ my civilization was erased from the face of the Earth…"

"I was," Rouge confirmed.

"Right, so why is it a big deal?" Knuckles asked. "I mean, Blaze is even _older_ than that, what with the whole billions of years in another dimension thing, and even if you don't count that, she's still hundreds if not thousands of years older than Sonic, but nobody seems to think that's a problem."

"I do!" Amy cried. Everyone ignored her.

"Well, yes, but Sonic is a bit older than Tails, whereas Tails is still a child," Espio pointed out. "I suppose from the perspective of someone who measures their lifespan in millennia if not epochs, it might not seem like much of a distinction, but it's still there."

Tails sighed. "Look, I know Cosmo's a lot older than I am, but I'm very mature for my age, and we both agreed that we wouldn't do anything serious until I was a little older. I'm aware it's a bit…unorthodox, but she'd be robbing the cradle no matter when we started a relationship given how much older she is than me, so we decided to just be adults about it and not let it be a big deal unless we want it to be. I know it must seem a bit weird to you, but we're happy together so far, so…" He shrugged.

"He has a point," Rouge commented.

"Does he?" Shadow asked.

"Well, yeah. This sort of thing comes up all the times when immortals enter into relationships with mortals. From our perspective, everyone's a lot younger than us, so if we don't want to make a fuss about it, we…don't. Keeps things simpler, really," Rouge said. "After all, except under certain circumstances our paramours won't be around forever, so we might as well enjoy them for as long as we can, right?"

"I….Guess that's one way of looking at it," Vector said uncomfortably.

"I don't like it!" Amy declared.

"For Tails' sake, or because objecting to it is a way for you to object to Sonic and Blaze's relationship?" Charmy asked slyly. The pink hedgehog fidgeted but did not respond.

"Well, I don't see anything wrong with it," Cream said innocently. "If the two of you are happy, then what's the big deal?"

"Exactly!" Knuckles said.

"This is an issue we probably don't need to be talking about," Silver interrupted.

"NOR-IS-IT-ONE-I-PARTICULARLY-CARE-ABOUT," Omega said.

"Blaze, how did Cosmo rescue you?" Silver asked.

Blaze began again. "Well, one day, I was just sitting in my cage listlessly, waiting to go insane again so I'd have something to do other than be utterly bored and depressed, when suddenly…"

…

Blaze blinked as the runes on her chains and bars started glowing, and unfathomable agony shot through her body. The sensation was so novel that she didn't even scream, so surprised to be feeling… Well, _anything_ really after being stuck in this cage for so long. _That's odd,_ she thought dazedly as everything went white. _I hadn't expected my next hallucination for a little longer…and it certainly feels different from any of the previous few._

It didn't occur to her to wonder if maybe this wasn't a hallucination. She'd gone down that road too many times, and been disappointed far too often to fall for that again. There was a nagging feeling deep within her trying to convince her that there was something different about this time, but she ignored it. After all, what did some stupid flame know about what was real and what wasn't?

When the light died down, she found herself in a familiar chamber, one she had revisited many times in her memories and hallucinations; the room where the order (she'd never gotten their name, had she?) Had banished her to the hell that had been her home for the last several billion years. She was mildly surprised to note that the place was in ruins; the statues and pillars reduced to crumbling piles of stone, huge chunks of the wall carvings fallen off, and big cracks zigzagging across the ceiling, with more than a few holes where parts of it had collapsed. Even the stuffed alligator was nothing but scraps of scaly hide dangling from the ceiling. The only thing that still remained completely intact was the floor design surrounding her cage, the spell that had banished her and—apparently—summoned her back. _That's new, usually this place looks in much better shape._ The idea thrilled her. At this point, any deviation from the unhappy norm, no matter how slight, was more than welcome.

Standing just outside the spell circle was a young woman with peach colored skin, wearing a green and gold-edged blouse with long sleeves ending in yellow cuffs, a large red jewel on her chest, and a long white scalloped dress with green edges somewhat resembling flower petals hanging down to her ankles, revealing her white and green boots. She had long shiny green hair falling past her waist, a pair of bangs framing her lovely face, and a pair of large pink flowers blooming from the sides of her head which Blaze didn't think were simply ornamentation. She had no nose, and a pair of big blue eyes staring at the feline in what looked like… Surprise? _Hmm, that's also new._

…

"So that's your girlfriend, Tails?" Espio inquired.

Tails blushed. "Y-yeah, that's her."

Mighty whistled. "Good choice, little guy! She's quite the catch!"

"She's very pretty," Cream agreed.

"Yeah… But not as pretty as you, of course!" Charmy said quickly.

"What kind of Mobian is she? She didn't look like any animal I'm familiar with," Amy commented.

"She might not be a Mobian at all. She _is_ from another dimension, remember," Rouge pointed out. "They might not have them there."

"No, they've got Mobians, but she isn't one of them," Sonic explained.

Blaze nodded. "Yes, she's a member of the Seedrian race, who has evolved from plants."

"That explains the flowers… And the coloration… And the style of dress…" Shadow murmured. "Pretty obvious in hindsight, really."

"Wait, so Tails is dating a plant?" Vector interjected.

"Yeah. What of it?" Tails asked defensively.

"Well, uh, it's just…relations between Mobians and humans are one thing, but she's not even in the same kingdom as you!" Vector pointed out awkwardly.

"So? He can always visit," Cream said.

"He's referring to the five kingdoms of life, not any particular nation," Shadow explained. "We belong to the animal kingdom, while as a plant creature, she would belong to the plant kingdom."

"AND-AS-A -ROBOT, I-BELONG-TO-NONE-OF-YOUR-PATHETIC-CATEGORIZATIONS, EXISTING-OUTSIDE-THEM-LIKE-THE-SUPERIOR-BEING-I-AM," Omega bragged.

"You know, we 'inferior creatures' are the ones who built you," Mighty pointed out. "Shouldn't you respect us more?"

"IT-IS-THE-PURPOSE-OF-ALL-CHILDREN-TO-SURPASS-THEIR-CREATORS," Omega said dismissively.

"Oh, I see," the rabbit said.

"What are the other two kingdoms?" asked a curious Amy.

"Fungus, bacteria, and unicellular protozoans and unicellular/multicellular algae with 9+2 cilia and flagella," Shadow said.

"Huh. Wouldn't have thought those'd have kingdoms," Mighty said.

"They don't fit in the other three, so they have to go somewhere," Tails pointed out.

"I don't even know what those last ones are!" Charmy commented.

"There's a _lot_ more varieties of all of them than you might expect," Shadow said.

"It's not that big a deal. Her kind has evolved far enough that… Well, let's just say that that sort of thing isn't really an issue and leave it at that," Tails said.

Vector threw up his hands in acquiescence. "All right, just wanted to make sure you didn't have to worry about anything freaky like her planting seeds in you or your getting mutated by some sort of freaky spores or something like that."

"Your concern is appreciated, but trust me, it's not a problem," Tails insist. "I, ah, made sure to research the matter thoroughly before pressing my suit."

"Oho, I'll bet you did!" Mighty chortled, elbowing the Fox.

"I have no idea what any of you are talking about," Knuckles confessed.

"AND-I-DON'T-CARE," Omega said.

"Then let's continue, shall we?" Blaze suggested.

…

"Oh my…" The girl breathed, a look of wonder and confusion on her face. "It worked! It actually worked! Er… At least, I _think_ it did… Are… Are you Blaze, the legendary hero?"

Blaze blinked, startled. That was _definitely_ new. In her past hallucinations, pretty much everyone who'd summoned and freed her had either apologized for her wrongful imprisonment, or called her a demon… Which, to be fair, she was. _None_ of them had said anything about her being a hero. "I am Blaze the Cat, yes," the feline muttered, feeling about as confused as her newest hallucination looked to be." Hero… Now, that's a new one."

"What you mean?" The girl asked, perplexed.

"Well, if I were a legendary hero, then why would I be in a cage bound by magical chains, and have spent the last several eons in a literal hell?" Blaze asked, deciding to humor the hallucination.

"Well… Because the evil sorcerers who captured you wanted you out of the way, of course," the girl said, looking even more confused.

"The evil-" Blaze had to struggle not to laugh. As much as she'd hated the order who'd banished her, at no point did she ever entertain the idea that they might be _evil._ Stupid, yes. Fearful, very much so. Bigoted, most definitely. But evil? Well, she supposed that depended on your definition of evil… After all, they'd certainly thought _she_ was evil, and she was relatively certain she wasn't. "Well, I imagine if you asked them, they'd tell you that _I_ was the evil one, and that they banished me to protect the world."

"What? Why would they do that?!" The girl asked, startled.

Blaze shrugged. "Because I'm the Queen of Demons, Chiefest of Calamities, Archfiend of the Abyssal Planes, Flames of Disaster, Avatar of Iblis, and Destroyer of Worlds."

The girl gasped. "You are?!"

"Well, that's what they said I am," Blaze said.

The girl blinked, confused all over again. "They said? Don't you know?"

"Well, there's a lot about myself I don't know," Blaze admitted. "I _am_ a demon, though, and I _can_ destroy worlds. I don't really want to, though."

"Why not?" The girl asked, bewildered.

Blaze blinked. "Well, why would I? If I destroyed the world, where would I live?" Granted, given she _might_ be capable of interdimensional travel, she could probably find a new world, but that was beside the point.

"That… Actually makes a lot of sense," the girl said, baffled. "But… I don't understand… The old snake said that I would be able to find someone who could help me here, why would he point me in the direction of a world-destroying demon?"

Blaze frowned, intrigued. This, too, was unfamiliar territory. "Old snake?"

The girl nodded. "Yes, an old serpent told me that if I came here, I could find a legendary hero who would be able to help me. He then gave me the spell to summon you, and the key to free you from your bonds."

Well, now Blaze was convinced this was a hallucination. Some random snake just happened to have the key and spell that would free her? The key that had been shattered and scattered into multiple random dimensions, and the spell which had never been written down and all who knew it killed? Impossible.

"Where did he get them from? For that matter, how did he even know I was here?" Blaze asked suspiciously.

"He claimed to be a collector of stories and antiquities. He assured me that you would be able to help me," the girl said, looking lost.

"Help you with what?" Blaze asked, curious as to what sort of preposterous adventure her imagination was going to throw at her now. It seemed to be going at full cylinders, she hadn't had a hallucination this intriguing in quite some time. She ignored the nagging sensation that maybe this time it would be real. After all, it didn't make any sense. How could this snake have found the tools to free her? And if he had them, why would he give them to some random girl instead of doing it himself?

…

"You seemed awfully committed to convincing yourself this was all a hallucination," Espio commented.

Blaze shrugged. "At that point in time, I'd no reason to believe it _wasn't_ just another hallucination. I'd had lots of similar experiences before, and all of them turned out to be fake in the end, so had no reason not to be certain that it would not turn out the same way. In retrospect, a lot of the signs that this was real were staring me right in the face, but… I'd been burned and my hopes dashed so many times in the past, I dared not hope again."

"That's so sad…" Cream whispered.

"Well, it's a good thing that you were wrong and this really was reality," Vector commented.

"Yeah eat, unless this is all just another hallucination and one day you'll wake up right back in that cage," Charmy said. Everyone glared at him. "Right right, not funny. Sorry."

"You did have a point, though," Shadow commented. "There's something shady about this snake guy. Who was he, and how did he get what was needed to free you? And why didn't he do it himself?"

"The answer to that wasn't something I'd learn until much later," Blaze said. "I had more immediate matters to concern myself with…"

…

The girl grimaced. "My kingdom is in grave peril, and I was seeking a hero who might be strong enough to save it."

Blaze instantly retracted some of the compliments she'd given to her imagination. This tired old storyline? Oh well, Beggars couldn't be choosers, and in her situation she couldn't really afford to turn down any source of entertainment, matter how fleeting or trite. "You are a Princess, then?"

The girl blinked in surprise. "How did you tell? Can… Can you read my mind?!"

"No, I'm just observant," Blaze said. "Given the style of your dress, looks, and hygiene, it's probably safe to assume you're a member of the nobility at the very least. Also, you said 'my kingdom' instead of 'my country' or 'my realm,' indicating a sense of possessiveness." Also, it was _usually_ a princess. That's how this sort of story went, after all.

"Well… You are correct," the girl said, impressed. "I am Princess Cosmo Hyacinthia del Sol, next in line for the Blossoming Throne, future leader of the Seedrian race and all the peoples of the kingdom of Solana. My father, King Lucas, has been driven mad by his grand vizier, a newcomer to our court."

"Of course it's the grand vizier," Blaze muttered. Everyone knew viziers always turned evil. What was the point of even having that position anyway? Had there ever been a time when there'd been a vizier who DIDN'T inevitably try to overthrow or undermine his King?

"The vizier's whispers convinced my father that the other nations bordering us envied our prosperity and wealth and were plotting to destroy us and take it for themselves," Cosmo explained. "Which is actually true, incidentally—we're one of the most prosperous lands in all the world—but the vizier convinced my father that the only way to protect our kingdom was to destroy those other countries first, and so he broke open the Forbidden Vault where all the vilest and most dangerous artifacts in our kingdom are sealed away, removed the Seeds of Helheim, and implanted them in my mother, Queen Earthia, causing her to transform into a giant cursed tree which is draining the life from the land through the sacred Sol Emeralds to grow the fabled Golden Fruit of Helheim, which will give my father—who now calls himself Dark Oak-all the power he needs to dominate the world."

…

Cream gasped, horrified. "He did that to his own wife?! That's horrible!"

"And super messed-up!" Vector agreed.

"But who's the vizier who's clearly the _real_ villain?" Mighty wondered.

"Jafar?" Charmy suggested fearfully.

Everyone stared at him. "Charmy, for the last time, Jafar isn't real," Espio said in exasperation.

"Not in _our_ dimension! He might be in others!" the bee insisted.

"Well, yes, but…" the chameleon trailed off, uncertain how to respond to that.

"It wasn't Jafar," Blaze said, much to Charmy's relief. "But someone who, in my personal opinion, is far worse."

"…Eep!" the bee squeaked.

Rouge and Shadow also looked alarmed, but for a different reason. "Did…did you say the Golden Fruit of Helheim?! As in…the forest? THAT Helheim?!" the bat cried, horrified.

"Oh, you've heard of it, then," Blaze said, unsurprised. "More knowledge from your mother, I assume?"

"That, and we have a few files on it back at GUN," Rouge said in concern.

"The Professor came up with more than a few theories about that dreadful place as well," Shadow said in alarm.

Everyone else looked rather confused. "What are they talking about?" Asked the baffled Knuckles. "I mean, I'm not the only one who doesn't get it, right?"

"Yeah, what the heck is Helheim?" Mighty asked.

"Helheim is one of the names for the Norse Underworld, ruled by Hel, goddess of death," Vector said knowledgeably, recalling a documentary he'd once watched when he was bored.

"Really? I thought that was Valhalla," Espio said.

"Valhalla is the warrior's paradise where those who die in glorious battle go," Vector explained. "Helheim is where all the other unlucky stiffs go. It's not nearly as pleasant. I hear the beer's terrible, for one thing."

"Oh," the chameleon said.

"Is that where we get the word 'hell' from?" Cream wondered.

"It's one possibility, yes," Tails said.

"I don't get it. What does the Norse Underworld have to do with some magic fruit?" Amy asked.

"Maybe that's where the fruit is from?" Cream suggested.

"Close, but no. The Helheim in question isn't the Norse Underworld, but an extradimensional world-eating organism in the form of a forest," Shadow explained.

"There's more than one Helheim?" asked a surprised Knuckles.

"Well yeah, it's not like anyone copyrighted the name," Sonic quipped.

"How can a world-eating organism be a forest?" asked a puzzled Espio.

"Ever heard of an invasive species?" Shadow asked.

"What, like the Black Arms?" Charmy asked.

"No, not like…" Shadow paused. "Well, okay, yeah, they count, but that's not what I mean. Ever heard of cane toads?"

"No," Knuckles said.

"Several years ago, Downunda was having trouble with beetles eating their sugarcane, so got the bright idea to import cane toads from another continent to eat the beetles and save the crops," Tails explained. "This, as it turned out, was a terrible idea. Cane toads are what are known as 'explosive breeders,' and since they had no natural predators on Downunda to keep their population in check, their numbers rapidly skyrocketed out of control. The local animals had trouble eating them due to the cane toad's natural poison, and the toads started to wreck the ecosystem by eating most of the prey insects and smaller animals the region's predators feasted on, causing thousands of animals to die of starvation. Or get eaten by the toads themselves. Also, the beetle population was barely touched-the bugs all lived high up on the sugarcane and the toads weren't able to reach that high-so the whole thing was pretty much a huge waste, and now the people of Downunda routinely have to go out and try to keep the cane toad population down by killing as many as they can, which isn't working as well as they might've hoped."

"Oh my! Those poor animals," Cream said, aghast.

"The toads or the animals they're crowding out?" Sonic asked.

"I can't feel sorry for both?" Cream asked.

"Okay, I think I'm starting to get the picture, but how does that apply to a world-eating forest?" Amy asked.

"The principle isn't that different, really," Rouge said. "Basically, what happens is this: an interdimensional crack opens up, and some seeds fall through. Those seeds take root in a world's soil, and grow into alien plants, which sprout supernaturally enticing fruit. When anyone – – be it an animal or person – – is compelled to eat that food, they are turned into a monster called an 'Inves.' And before you ask, no, there isn't a cure. The beasts carry a virus within them, and when they attack people, they infect their victims, causing more plants to start sprouting from their wounds, eventually turning them into more Inves and causing more fruits to form. The Inves eat the fruits, which not only allow them to get stronger and take on more powerful forms, but once they eventually digest them, the seeds they leave behind grow into more plants, sprouting more fruits, leading to more Inves, and so on."

"And of course, while you might be able to contain initial outbreaks if you're quick enough, more and more cracks will start popping up and dumping more seeds which will grow into more plants as time goes on, until ultimately the whole world is just one big forest full of monsters," Shadow continued grimly.

"Geez," Mighty said, disturbed. "That's pretty fucking scary."

"Wait, couldn't you just… You know… NOT eat the fruit?" Asked a confused Amy.

"The fruits emit some sort of pheromones or psychic pollen which makes them irresistible," Rouge explained. "And of course, even if you have the willpower to resist eating them, that doesn't mean the average animal will."

"Well, couldn't you just… I don't know, fire nukes through the cracks or something? Blow up the forest before it can spread here?" Vector asked.

"THAT-WAS-MY-RECOMMENDATION," Omega spoke up.

"It wouldn't do much more than slow the invasion down. After all, remember that it's a forest extending over countless worlds in God knows how many parallel dimensions," Rouge said. "Even if we blow up or burned down parts of it, it can always open up new cracks in unaffected areas and dump more seeds on us. Sooner or later, we'd run out of nukes and napalm."

"NOT-IF-YOU-SENT-ME-IN! I'D-HAVE-THE-WHOLE-THING-TAKEN-CARE-OF-IN-A-MATTER-OF-DAYS!" Omega bragged.

"Let's save that is a measure of last resort," Shadow said in a conciliatory tone.

"Well, now I've got another couple of things to add to my list of things that give me nightmares: fruit and forests," Charmy said chipperly.

"I'm never going to be able to look at fruit salad the same way again," Cream lamented.

"Are we at risk of being invaded by this Helheim?" Espio asked in concern.

"Our analysts and specialists don't believe it's going to come here anytime soon… However, it _has_ visited us several times in the past," Shadow explained.

This gave everyone a start. "Wait, really?" Sonic asked, surprised.

"Hmm, I suspected as much…" Tails murmured.

"Wait, but if that thing's come here before, then how come the whole planet isn't a giant forest full of monsters?" Asked a confused Knuckles.

"Because Helheim isn't simply a mindless organism, spreading across worlds merely to propagate itself," Blaze spoke up. "It's a genius loci."

"Loki? I thought he was another Norse God?" Said the confused Knuckles. "Or are there more than one of him out there, too?"

"Not _that_ Loki. The genius loci is a place that has a mind," Tails explained.

Blaze nodded. "Helheim has an intelligence of its own, albeit one creatures like us would have a very hard time fathoming. After all, when is the last time you tried talking to a tree?"

Rouge nodded in agreement. "It doesn't attack worlds out of malice or hunger, but because… Well, whenever it comes in contact with an intelligent species, it feels driven to test it. Push them to evolve, to change, to see what they might become when faced with unthinkable adversity and the impending destruction of their world."

"Why?" Cream asked.

Shadow shrugged. "Curiosity? That's the best motivation if any we can ascribe to something like that."

"How can threatening to destroy a planet and wipe out or transform entire species into monsters help them evolve?!" Knuckles asked incredulously.

"When your back is at the wall and things seem at their darkest, that's often when you find out what sort of person you really are," Blaze said. "The hottest crucible can sometimes forge the strongest steel. Destruction is simply one of many tools that can be used to induce change, for after all, does not destroying something make way for something new? As a 'destroyer of worlds,' this is something I'm all too aware of."

"So… What, it threatens to destroy worlds to see how the people react and what they become when faced with an implacable, unstoppable force of destruction and change?" Mighty asked.

Rouge nodded. "Yes, but there's a bit more than that. And that's where the Golden Fruit comes in."

"Whenever Helheim devours a world, it grows a single Golden Fruit of absolute power," Shadow explained. "Whenever it begins to intrude upon an inhabited world, its avatars and emissaries spread rumors about it, to entice the strongest warriors, champions, and heroes to rise up and fight everything the forest, their own world, and each other can throw at them for the right to claim it. Whoever makes it to the end at the top of the heap may eat the Fruit, gaining godlike power and the ability to reshape the world and the people in it as they see fit, to match their ideals. Create an egalitarian utopia, a strict meritocracy, a Social Darwinist hell, a silent world without free will, a barren wasteland, whatever they wish. And there is evidence that this has happened to our world on more than one occasion."

"What? No way! Wouldn't somebody have noticed?" Amy asked in disbelief.

"Oh, but they did. Or have you forgotten the story of the Garden of Eden?" Rouge asked.

Amy stiffened. "Wait… Are you saying that…!"

Tail snapped his fingers. "I thought so! So you're implying that all the myths and legends about someone seeking out or finding a magic fruit which allows them to change their fates…"

"May be based off of an account of someone claiming the Golden Fruit at some point in the distant past, yes," Shadow said. "The Professor suspected that the Apple of Eden, along with the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, the Apples of Eris, and the Apples of Idunn might all be, if not separate accounts, reflections of what really happened in a prior encounter with Helheim, and the world in its present state is a result of whatever ad ancient hero chosen it to be after eating the fruit."

"I noticed that the fruit in all of those stories were apples," Espio commented.

"The Golden Fruit is an apple, yes, or something that _looks_ like it," Blaze confirmed.

"You've seen it, then?" Shadow asked, intrigued.

Blaze nodded. "Yes, seeing as how it's what Dark Oak was trying to obtain. Many thousands of years ago- either before or after I was banished, I'm not sure which-Helheim encroached upon the Sol dimension, and the world's greatest champions fought to claim the Golden Fruit. It's not entirely clear what happened – – it happened a very long time ago, after all – – but Cosmo believes that either her eldest ancestor obtained the fruit and used it to create her people and ensure that their kingdom would be a prosperous, blessed place, the envy of the rest of the world, or that her entire race somehow evolved from leftover Inves and claimed the place that had been the most heavily affected by the invasion as their home. Regardless, what's clear is this: the Royal Family of Solana managed to save some seeds from the Golden Fruit and sealed them away, both afraid of what might happen if someone else got their hands on them and of what they might do if _they_ got their hands on them."

"And since seeds can be used to grow the same kind of plant that produced them, Dark Oak was convinced by his vizier that he could grow a new Golden Fruit to fulfill his ambitions, because it wasn't like Helheim was going to come back and offer him a new one anytime soon," Sonic added.

"Of course, growing a new Golden Fruit is easier said than done. After all, Helheim is only able to produce a single fruit at a time by consuming an entire planet!" Blaze pointed out. "With the guidance of his vizier, Dark Oak believed that he could artificially induce the seeds to grow by implanting them in his wife, transforming her into a tree, and then causing immense suffering across the kingdom which he could then transform into negative energy using the sacred Sol Emeralds and feed into the tree, giving it the power it needed to grow another Fruit."

"… That's, like, super messed up," said an incredulous Charmy.

"But why use his wife? Why couldn't he just plant them in the ground or something?" A disgusted Cream asked.

"The same reason you can't just grow any plant anywhere you want," Tails said. "It's not enough to have sunlight and water, you also need to have the right soil to plant the seed in."

"And in this case, the soil was a person?!" Vector cried.

"Actually, there may be precedent for that," Rouge spoke up. "We're not entirely sure why, but from the accounts we've pieced together, it seems that the champion who claims the Fruit doesn't just pluck it from a tree or something. It's presented to him by a 'Woman of Beginnings,' who is most usually someone very close to the hero who has somehow been ascended into a godlike being as well. It's not entirely clear how this happens, but it seems to be an important part of the process."

"And Dark Oak forced his wife to be that Woman, to ensure the Fruit would grow," Tails said.

"… What kind of guy would do that to his own wife?!" Mighty asked, repulsed.

"More people then you'd think, unfortunately," Espio said cynically.

"Once Cosmo related all this to me, the inevitable question came," Blaze said. "Would I help her?"

"What did you say?" Knuckles asked.

Blaze smirked. "Well, I'm _here_ , aren't I?"

…

Blaze listened, enraptured, as Cosmo wrapped up her tale of woe. Her imagination really _had_ come up with something this time! It'd be a shame once this was all over, who could say when she'd have another fake adventure this good again? "When my father's minions, turned into Inves and came for us, my big sister Galaxina sacrificed herself to buy time for my retainers and I to escape," Cosmo said, face heavy with grief. "Since then, we've been searching the kingdom for someone, anyone, who might be strong enough to defeat my father… But everyone is either too busy struggling to survive in the hell he's turned Solana into, or too focused on their own problems to care all that much about the bigger picture. Just when I'd given up all hope, we ran into that strange snake, who told me about this place, about you, and how if I summoned the being there I might find the champion I needed to save my realm." Her shoulders sagged. "I was expecting a legendary hero. Instead, I get a world destroying demon. Now, all is lost…"

Despite the fact that the girl was probably nothing more than a figment of her imagination, Blaze was surprised to find that she was still capable feeling empathy for her. "The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, you know," she said.

Cosmo blinked. "What?"

"I see no reason why a demon cannot also be a hero of legend," Blaze continued. "After all, depending on who you ask, a hero can be no more than a criminal or terrorist. It's all a matter of perspective. And besides, as I said before… I don't want to destroy the world. I was banished by people who were convinced that I was evil. I rather think that saving the world would be the perfect way to show them they were wrong, don't you?"

Cosmo's eyes lit up with hope. "Then… Then you'd be willing to…!" She hesitated, a suspicious look crossing her face. "Wait a minute. It _can't_ be that easy. You're a demon, after all! There's no way you would just agree to help me like that, no strings attached! There… There has to be some ulterior motive, or… Some price to pay. What is it you want? Do you want to kill everyone descended from those who banished you? All our riches? My soul or the souls of everyone in the kingdom? Do you wish to rule the world, or burn it to ashes? If I were to free you… What… What would you want in return?"

"Nothing," Blaze said.

Cosmo was taken aback. "Nothing?!"

"I've been gone for so long that there's no way I'd be able to find everyone descended from those who banished me, let alone find time to kill them all," Blaze pointed out. "Heck, I've been gone for so long, it wouldn't surprise me if at least half the population were indirectly descended from them. I have no use for money or weatlh. I don't want your soul, or anyone else's, what would I do with them? Similarly, I have no desire to rule or destroy the world. I hardly know what I do with it if I were in charge!"

…

Everyone gave Blaze skeptical looks. "Well, I didn't know I was going to conquer it _then_!" She insisted, blushing.

…

"But… Surely there must be something?" Cosmos in disbelief. "If you weren't stuck in that cage… What would you do? Is there nothing you want?"

Blaze hesitated, surprised by the question. The answer… The real answer… Rose unbidden to her lips. "I just want to be free," she said softly.

Cosmo blinked in surprise. "Huh?"

"I have been a prisoner for longer than you can possibly imagine. Longer than this country has existed, quite likely," Blaze said quietly. "I've suffered, alone, for eons. All I want… All I really want… Is to not be a prisoner. To be free to go anywhere I want, do whatever I choose. To not wake up every morning and find myself still in this cage, dying a little every day. At one point, I suppose I may have wanted more… But that was so long ago I can't even remember. All I want, Princess… Is freedom." Her vision blurred, and much to her surprise, the cat realized she was crying. Huh. She hadn't done that in a while…

She wasn't the only one. "Oh…" Cosmo sniffled. "That's… That's so sad! I…" She hesitated for moment, looking uncertain, but then steeled her resolve. "Ohhh… There's a chance I might regret this, but… I can't… I can't just leave you in there, not after hearing that." She took a deep breath, and then asked, "Blaze the Cat… If I let you out of there, do you promise you will help me stop my father and save my kingdom?"

Blaze blinked, and then smiled. "Princess," she said. "If you let me out of here, I would be more than happy to do anything you wished for the rest of your days."

"Don't you mean your days?" Cosmo asked.

"I'm a demon. I'm fairly sure I'll outlast you," Blaze joked.

Cosmo chuckled, and then got serious. "Very well, then. Blaze the Cat, Queen of Demons, Chiefest of Calamities, Archfiend of the Abyssal Planes, Flames of Disaster, Avatar of Iblis, and Destroyer of Worlds, I, Princess Cosmo Hyacinthia del Sol, next in line for the Blossoming Throne, future leader of the Seedrian race and all the peoples of the kingdom of Solana, grant you your freedom!" She withdrew a key from her blouse and inserted it into a small hole on the outside of the cage, turning it with a click.

Blaze blinked in surprise as the runes on her chains and the cage started glowing, feeling a strange and unfamiliar power welling up in them. _That's odd… That's never happened before-_

Without warning, every single rune went dead. A moment after that, everything – – her shackles, the chains, the bars that had enclosed her for untold millennia – – simply… Evaporated, dissipating into thin air, leaving nothing separating her from Cosmo, who timidly took a step back when she saw the stunned look on Blaze's face.

The feline blinked in confusion and looked at her hands, puzzled, and not sure why she was. After all, this had hardly been the first time she'd hallucinated being released from her cage, although all the other times, she had still been able to feel the weight of her chains, the wet blanket of the dampening spell suppressing her power, lingering in the back of her mind, subtly reminding her that none of this was real, and she was still as trapped as she had ever been. But this time… This time that weight was no longer there. That suffocating, cloying pressure which had been there for so long that she had almost forgotten it, was gone, and in its place she could feel the raging heat of the flame within her reigniting, joyously burning with freedom… Though not enough so to nearly tear her apart or send her blasting across dimensions again, it seemed to have learned its lesson from the last time. It wouldn't want to land both of them in another dimension with a group of people waiting to imprison her because she happened to match the description of some prophesized destroyer, after all! Blaze wasn't sure why, but she felt a sense of…acquiescence. It would no longer try to fight her or destroy her to escape, but would submit to her will and supply her with as much power as she needed for whatever she needed it for, no strings attached. She supposed she should have been wary, but something told her this was genuine…and besides, she had more important things to think about at that moment: namely, the fact that she was no longer a prisoner.

 _This… This can't be,_ she thought in denial. _This is just another hallucination, one more realistic than most. It has to be. There's no way… No way that… That I could really, truly be…_ "Free," she whispered.

"I'm sorry?" Cosmo asked uncertainly.

Blaze looked up, tearing up again. In that moment, she realized the truth. This was not just another hallucination. This was real. It was all real. Which also meant… "Free," she whispered. "I'm… I'm free! I'm free! I'M FREE!"

Cosmo yelped and stumbled backwards as a tremendous blast of flame erupted around the demon cat, nearly singeing her. Streamers of flame and pillars of fire erupted all over the room, tearing the already crumbling chamber to even more pieces, embers and tongues of flame dancing in the air in wild and enthusiastic patterns, spirals and rings of fire spinning everywhere in elaborate formations, and in the center of it all was Blaze, laughing and crying hysterically… But not with the malevolence of an ancient evil freed at long last to get its revenge, but the joy of an innocent soul tormented and imprisoned for so long that she had forgotten what the world outside her cage was like finally being released. Blaze was free, and exulting in it, and so, Cosmo realized, was she.

Eventually, the fires died down. Blaze strode over, picked Cosmo up off the ground, and hugged her so tightly the Seedrian thought that her spine was going to break. "Thank you," the cat whispered, hot tears rolling down her cheeks and landing on Cosmo's shoulders, letting up bursts of steam as they made contact. "Thank you so much. You have no comprehension of the depths of my gratitude for you. I swear to you on this day, that for the great kindness you have performed for me, not only will I save your kingdom, but ensure that it will prosper and remain safe from all who might harm it for as long as you, your children, and your children's children draw breath. You and your people shall regard me as a friend until the end of days, and my power shall ever be yours to call upon when it is needed most."

Wordlessly, Cosmo hugged her back, and though the stone around them creaked and groaned and the world outside grew ever closer to destruction, that was something they could put aside for the moment. Right now, this was all that mattered.

…

Very few of Blaze's listeners had a dry eye after hearing that. Even Amy was having trouble suppressing a sniffle or two. "I would like to meet this Cosmo," Cream said softly. "I want to give her a hug as big as that to thank her for saving you, Blaze."

"Me too!" Charmy added.

"The next time I see her, I'll pass it on," Blaze promised.

"You kept that promise to her, didn't you?" Shadow realized suddenly.

Blaze nodded. "I did, though trust me when I say I did not, at the time, think that the best way to protect her kingdom would be to rule it myself and conquer everything else."

"So you didn't, uh…" Mighty asked.

"Steal it from her because I somehow interpreted it as the best way to keep my promise? No, she gave it to me of her own volition," Blaze said. "As for why she did that, well… We'll get there soon enough."

"What happened next?" Silver asked.

"Next? Well, I had my first encounter with the enemy… As well as meet the second person who would be one of the most important people in my life," Blaze fondly recalled.

…

Once Blaze regained control over her emotions, Cosmo led her out of the chamber. As they picked their way through the ruins, the Princess explained that they were in a complex buried deep beneath a small village in the countryside. "As far as I can tell, nobody knew this place was down here," Cosmo explained to Blaze as they squeezed their way past some rubble almost completely clogging a doorway. "There aren't even any stories or legends about this place or what happened here."

"The order who banished me must've been extremely thorough in hiding their secrets, then," Blaze mused as they climbed over a fallen pillar. "They _really_ must not have wanted anyone to find a way to bring me back, let alone know that I had ever been here."

"I still can't believe they did that to you," Cosmo confessed as they crossed a very decrepit bridge over a deep chasm. "I mean, I guess I can understand _why_ they did it, or why they thought they had to, but… You don't seem even remotely evil, let alone someone who merits such horrific treatment."

"I'm not evil now, but I can't be entirely positive I never was," Blaze admitted while sidling a long a ledge. "I feel as if I destroyed at least one world at some point in the distant past, but I can't really remember it very well. There is much about myself I do not know…"

"Well, maybe that's a good thing," Cosmo said optimistically, ducking to keep from hitting her head on a low ceiling. "That means you have a chance to start fresh, forge a new identity for yourself. Become known as a hero of legend instead of a destroyer of worlds."

"I would like that," Blaze agreed as they climbed a ladder. "Speaking of which, I don't suppose you have any ideas on how to go about defeating your father and saving the land? I can feel myself growing stronger by the minute now that that suppression spell is gone, but I don't believe I'll be at full strength for quite some time, and I'm not sure how powerful I'll need to be to beat him."

"Well, my father's fortress-which is built into the Doom Tree my mother has become and incorporates what's left of the Royal Palace-is guarded by a great army as well as a force field being generated by runoff from all the negative energy he's absorbing to fuel the genesis of the new Golden Fruit," Cosmo explained as the two of them tried to lever a stubborn door open. "That energy is being collected through the seven Sol Emeralds, which have been placed in strongholds at the ends of each of the great tree's seven roots, scattered across the land. If we could retrieve the Emeralds, we should be able to break the energy flow and not only lower the barrier but also hopefully prevent him from gathering the power he needs to grow the Fruit."

"And of course, we'll need to get all seven instead of removing just one and hoping it'll be enough," Blaze intuited as they casually waltzed past long-defunct booby traps.

"Correct," Cosmo said as Blaze used her flames in lieu of torches so they could navigate a very dark passage. "How did you guess?"

"That tends to be how these sorts of things go," Blaze said vaguely as they tried to figure out which of three pathways to go down next. "So, exactly what are these Sol Emeralds? Standard mysterious mystical objects of ultimate power, sacred to your people's history, terrible if used in the wrong hands, and so on?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Cosmo said, squinting in the firelight to see if a smudge on the wall was a marker she'd left on her way down to show the way back, or just a smudge. "According to legend, one of my ancestors made a pact with the sun goddess Solana to ensure endless bounty and prosperity for my country. The terms of the pact are unclear, but we received the Emeralds in return for whatever promise we made to her, and have used their power to ensure our harvests and bounties are ever rich, and our magic strong and powerful, while many other nations struggled to make ends meet. Understandably, this doesn't exactly make us popular with some of our neighbors."

"Naturally," Blaze said as they nimbly hopped across several holes in the floor. "I suppose it makes since you would worship a sun goddess. Evolved from plants, and all that." She wasn't sure why, but something deep within her – – the flame, perhaps? – – Seemed to resonate at the idea of power born from a sun deity. Something about it felt… Familiar, somehow. Interesting.

"Yes, but I'm not 100% sure that's how it really happened," Cosmo confessed as they walked up a crumbling stair. "There've been stories and accounts of the Sol Emeralds existing for centuries, millennia even, long before our country existed, in other parts of the world. Whatever they are, they're very powerful, very dangerous, and we have to retrieve them from my father at all costs."

"Noted. So, any ideas on how we're going to do that?" Blaze asked as they walked down a long corridor. "I'm guessing these strongholds are going to be heavily guarded, and while I suppose I might be strong enough to take them down single-handedly by the time we get there, I doubt it'll be easy."

"All the strongholds are near populated areas, so the Emeralds will be able to draw a greater amount of negative energy from the people there to feed to the tree," Cosmo explained while warily watching the ceiling to see if any loose stones were going to fall on her head. "I was thinking maybe we could try and convince them to help us? After all, this is their land too, and if my father succeeds, they will all suffer."

"Except it won't be as simple as just asking them for help, we'll probably have to help each of them deal with whatever short-term crisis they're dealing with at the moment before they'll agree to assist us," Blaze speculated as they hopped from pillar to pillar rising from a great chasm.

Cosmo blinked in surprise as they passed through a long gallery full of broken statues of Blaze, only more monstrous than she actually was. "Quite likely. Are you sure you've never done this before?"

"I've just got a good instinct for this sort of thing, is all," Blaze said evasively as she scowled at some of the broken statues, deciding not to tell Cosmo that after the hundreds of thousands of hallucinatory adventures she'd embarked on during her imprisonment, she'd gotten a good sense of the way most of these epic quests were structured. It would only make her upset. "Regardless, it's a good idea, or at least a good place to start. I don't suppose there any other local heroes we might be able to team up with?"

The Princess shook her head sadly as they walked across a broken mural of a demonic Blaze being banished to Hell, carefully not looking down at it. "Most of them are already dead. My father took care of them right away to ensure they wouldn't pose a threat to him. Pretty much everyone else left is too busy dealing with their own problems, which is why I was desperate enough to believe that old snake when he told me about you, because at that point I didn't know who else to turn to."

Blaze frowned at that as they walked through a hallway lined with what might have been paintings of important members of the order that had captured her, except they were so old that there was nothing left but faded scraps of canvas. "Yes…that snake…something about that still doesn't seem right. The key to my prison was broken and scattered across several dimensions, and the spell used to banish me was lost when the order who captured me killed themselves. How could he have possibly gotten his hands on that, as well as the place where you would need to summon me?"

"Well, maybe one or more of the members of the order chickened out and didn't kill themselves with the rest? Maybe someone wrote down the summoning process after all because they were having trouble memorizing it?" Cosmo suggested. "As for the key… Well, it has been a very long time since you were banished. Maybe, through a series of seemingly random and unrelated events, all the pieces found their way back here from whichever planes they were sent to? That sort of thing happens sometimes, doesn't it?"

"It does," Blaze agreed. "Usually because someone or something _wanted_ them to be. I have a strong suspicion this snake wasn't all that he appeared to be."

"Yeah, I kind of got that vibe too," Cosmo admitted. "He could've been a God in disguise, trying to help us indirectly. That also happens sometimes, right?"

"Yes, but he could just as easily have been a sorcerer, or another demon, or something even worse," Blaze pointed out. "Whoever he was, he must have wanted you to free me for some ulterior reason, meaning my agreeing to help you save the land from your father must factor into some larger scheme of which we do not yet comprehend."

"That's possible," Cosmo admitted. "However, right now I don't see that we have any other option but to keep going. I can't _not_ let my kingdom fall into ruin, after all."

"True," Blaze admitted. She frowned, a thought occurring to her. "Earlier, you said you were traveling with some retainers… But you're the only person who was there to greet me. Where are they?"

"I left them on the surface to guard the entrance," Cosmo explained. "Also, I thought it might have been better for you if the first face you saw after your lengthy imprisonment was a friendly one, not a group of soldiers bristling with weapons and armor."

"Very considerate of you," Blaze complimented the Princess. "I'm not sure if it would've made that much of a difference, in the end, but I appreciate the thought nonetheless." She narrowed her eyes, noticing that the tunnel they were following terminated up ahead in a brick wall that looked like something had recently smashed through it. "Is that our exit?"

Cosmo nodded. "Yes, that leads to a basement in one of the houses in the village that was built over this place. The owner discovered the opening after the seismic activity caused by my father turning my mother into a giant tree that drove roots into the ground all over the kingdom settled down. The quake must've exposed it, otherwise, I don't know how I would ever have found you!"

"I suppose that's one thing to be thankful to your father for," Blaze commented as they climbed through the hole in the wall and found themselves in what would've looked like an average, everyday dug-out cellar in a primitive feudal-era house… Except for the fact that there were numerous very large roots jutting out of the walls, bursting down through the ceiling, and snaking across the floor, somewhat unsettling foliage spreading out from the roots like some kind of kudzu, with strange reddish-purple fruits with looping stems that caused them to somewhat resemble padlocks sprouting all over the place. Something about the fruits drew her attention, and a rumbling in her stomach reminded her that she hadn't had anything to eat in… In… Well, it had been so long since she'd last eaten she couldn't even remember when it had been, but some instinct—provided by the flame, perhaps?- Warned her that eating any of those fruits would be a very, very bad idea. "My, those roots really must have come far if they're all the way out here," Blaze commented, before abruptly realizing she didn't actually know just how far from the great tree this village was, and anxiously hoped she hadn't made some sort of faux pas. She wouldn't want to look like an idiot in front of Cosmo, after all.

The blood (Or was it chlorophyll? Xylem? She was a plant person, what exactly did she have running through her veins, assuming she had any?) Drained from Cosmo's face as she stared at the alien plants. "These weren't here before."

Blaze shot her friend a look. "And I'm guessing their sudden appearance is not a good thing."

Instead of answering, Cosmo rushed up the nearby set of stairs, leaping over the roots splintering the wooden steps. "Aizel! Hogard! Garan! Damil!" She shouted as she vanished through the ceiling.

Blaze swore and chased after her, yelling, "Running blindly into situations like this while yelling at the top of your lungs is probably not the best of ideas, Princess!" She dashed up the stairs, entering the house proper, and saw-

 _My, that's a lot of roots,_ she thought vaguely, staring at the grotesquerie before her. _Amazing that they can still be alive, given how many are shoved into-_

…

"I, uh, don't think we need that much detail," Amy interjected.

Blaze paused, noticing the pale looks on the others' faces, and Cream shivering. "…Perhaps not," she conceded.

…

Blaze quickly looked away and rushed past what… What was left of the house's former occupants, quickly catching up to Cosmo just before she could run through the front door, broken open by more roots coming in from outside, yanking her back and covering her mouth with a hand. "Be quiet," she hissed to the Princess, the Seedrian's blue eyes wide with fear and horror. "Do you want to get yourself killed?!"

She pressed herself against the wall and moved the both of them away from the door, ducking beneath a window which had more plant matter coming in from outside. After she had assured herself that Cosmo wasn't going to do anything foolish, she cautiously peeked her head over the windowsill to see what was going on outside.

It wasn't much prettier out there, either. What must have at one time been a bucolic feudal-era farming village was now overgrown with alien plants like the kind in the cellar. Roots and moss and vines covered in eerie leaves with more of that strange fruit sprouting from it snaked across the ground and grew up the sides of the buildings, smashing through doors and walls and windows and roofs to get into the interior. Bizarre and twisted trees rose up here and there, and faces could be seen through holes in the bark, faces of still-living people in horrible agony as the plants grew around and _inside_ of them, the trees seeming to grow in vitality with every anguished moan and sob from the poor souls trapped inside. Vaguely humanoid monsters about Blaze's height scurried here and there, their bodies covered in what at first glance looked like brown and silver armor, but Blaze quickly realized was their _skin,_ some kind of exoskeleton, but one with a consistency more like the shell of a nut or seed than that of an insect's carapace, ovular purple eyes staring out from the sides of their long, flat heads as they hissed and clicked and chittered to each other, long sharp claws twitching and stained with blood. _Could those be the 'Inves' Cosmo mentioned? I suppose if Dark Oak's trying to draw on Helheim's power, they'd make for good soldiers._

Due to the darkness outside, Blaze initially assumed that it was night, but a closer look revealed to her that the night sky was not, in fact, the night sky, but the leafy canopy of a gargantuan tree, the little bright specks that she'd initially mistaken for stars actually spots where light from outside managed to make its way through the dense foliage. She felt a pang of sadness at this, for she'd hoped to see the night sky again, having been trapped in hell for so long she could only barely remember the beauty of the stars she had briefly glimpsed on that night so very long ago. Off in the distance, she could see the trunk of this tree, a titanic column of wood stretching up into the heavens, jagged thorns and branches jutting from its sides. She couldn't see Dark Oak's castle or the seven great roots Cosmo had told her about from this angle, but she could just imagine them, zigzagging their way across the landscape, digging into the earth and leaching energy from it to feed its wicked botanist's desires. _Incredible. And to think, most mythical trees of great power are seen as sacred!_

She glanced down at Cosmo, and then put a finger to her lips. After moment, the plant girl nodded, and Blaze removed her hand from her mouth. Cosmo cautiously peered over the windowsill, and barely managed to stifle a gasp before ducking back undercover. "No… All those people…" She whispered.

"Is there any way we can help them?" Blaze asked.

"Yes. Only one way," Cosmo said softly. Blaze did not need to press any further to know what it was. She had, in truth, suspected this all along.

…

"And by one way, you mean…" Vector asked uneasily.

Blaze started to open her mouth, and then hesitated, glancing at Cream, an uncertain look on her face. "You had to kill them, didn't you?" The rabbit asked softly. There was nothing judgmental or shocked or outraged by the question. Just a simple query of fact. Blaze found herself thinking that she might've preferred it if there had been.

"Yes," Blaze admitted. "The only way to save them was to kill them."

The others stirred uncomfortably at this. "How could you?!" Amy demanded. "How could you do something so awful?!"

"What would you have had me do, then? Leave them alive, but suffering without end?" Blaze asked sharply.

"Surely there must've been another way!" The pink hedgehog insisted.

"If I hadn't killed them, they would've died anyway, after I destroyed the great tree," Blaze insisted. "So it was either kill them now, or kill them later. I saw no reason to let them be in pain for a moment longer than they had to be. Death was the only kindness I could offer them. There was no other way." She glanced at Cream, trying to read the expression on her young friend's face. There was nothing there. Somehow, that unsettled her more than shock or anger would have.

"Sometimes, killing someone can be an act of mercy," Shadow mused.

"Something you know from experience?" Espio inquired. The black hedgehog did not reply.

"That was pretty messed up…is that sort of thing really what happens whenever Helheim invades a world?" asked a disturbed Knuckles.

"No, usually there's more sunlight," Rouge said.

"…I'm not sure if that makes things better or not," Knuckles said.

…

"I don't understand, how could they have found us so quickly?" Cosmo wondered. "There's no way they could have-"

Blaze shushed her again, noticing activity outside. The clanking of metal footsteps preceded the arrival of a stocky figure at least twice as tall as Blaze, covered from head to toe in crimson armor with a cape a brighter shade of red than the rest of his body. He had curving spikes on his shoulders, a large orange orb embedded in his chest with the emblem of a pineapple embossed inside, and a boxy helmet with a pair of horns, a small orange orb on top, and a larger one taking up the face like some sort of giant eye. "Who's that?"

Cosmo grimaced. "That's Red Pine, one of the Four Heavenly Generals who serve my father, dispensing justice across the land."

Blaze gave the princess an incredulous look. "You call _this_ justice?!"

"They've always had a rather loose definition of the word," Cosmo admitted sheepishly.

There was a rustling sound, and suddenly another figure appeared…but this one was not moving of his own volition, but suspended in the air by barbed vines wrapped around his wrists, ankles, waist, and neck. By the greenish hair and lack of a nose, Blaze intuited it must be of Cosmo's species, though from the darker hues of hair and skin, larger and bulkier body, and the branches growing from the side of his head in place of flowers, it was probably a male. He was wearing armor and livery, but it was a bit hard to make much of it out given that most of it had been torn to shreds, exposing his bare flesh, which was oozing some sort of liquid (Blood? Sap? Xylem? Something else?) from numerous wounds and lacerations. More of that fluid was dripping from his mouth, and one of his eyes was swollen shut. "No…Damil!" Cosmo gasped.

"One of your retainers?" Blaze guessed.

"Yes, but…oh, what has Red Pine done to him?! We have to-" Cosmo moaned.

Blaze shushed her as Red Pine began to talk. "Well, Damil, it looks like you're the last one," the general said conversationally. "I must say, you lasted a lot longer than I expected you to. Your companions all died so much quicker than you. I'm not even sure I can say I'm honestly enjoying this anymore."

"That's…two of us, then…" the knight rasped hoarsely.

"Tell you what. I'm feeling rather generous, so I'll make you an offer," Red Pine said affably. "Tell me where the princess is and what she's doing in this worthless shithole of a village, and I…well, I'll still kill you, not going to lie about that, but I'll kill you _before_ I claim the princess, so you don't have to see the look on her face when she realizes you sold her out. What do you say? I think that's very reasonable, isn't it?"

Damil responded by spitting in the general's face. Red Pine calmly wiped away the saliva, said, "Yeah, I pretty much figured that's what you'd do," then backhanded Damil so hard he was nearly ripped from the vines, his head snapping back. He gasped in pain, spitting up liquid. "Figured you wouldn't crack. You're too stupidly loyal, just like the others. But…does that loyalty go both ways?"

Damil groaned. "What…what are you-"

"PRINCESS!" Red Pine bellowed. "IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, I SUGGEST YOU LISTEN VERY CAREFULLY! I HAVE SLAUGHTERED EVERYONE IN THIS VILLAGE, AND ALL OF YOUR RETAINERS SAVE ONE IS DEAD! PRESENT YOURSELF IMMEDIATELY AND SURRENDER OR ELSE HE, TOO, SHALL DIE!"

Damil gasped. "N-no! Princess, please, don't-"

Red Pine casually backhanded him again. Damil cried out in pain and vomited fluids and a few teeth. "YOU HAVE UNTIL THE COUNT OF TEN! ONE!"

Cosmo started to get up. Blaze grabbed her and pulled her back down. "What are you doing?!"

"TWO!"

"I have to save him, I can't just sit here and let him die!" Cosmo hissed.

"THREE!"

"If you go out there, he'll kill Damil anyway. And then he'll have you!" Blaze pointed out.

"FOUR!"

"Well…y-you can stop him, can't you? You're a super-powerful world-ending demon!" Cosmo said anxiously.

"FIVE!"

"I told you, I'm not at full power," Blaze said. "I haven't fought anything in a very long time. I'm not positive I can beat him, let alone his entire army, in my current state."

"SIX!"

"But…but we can't do _nothing!_ " Cosmo protested.

"SEVEN!"

"Sometimes you have to pick your battles. I may not be able to stop him now, but I _will_ be able to later," Blaze promised. "But if we go out there now, I can't guarantee what will happen…and if I fail now, then all hope for your land is lost, and all this—the deaths of this village, and your comrades, and your sister—will have been for naught. Is that truly a risk you want to take?"

…

"…That wasn't very nice," Charmy complained.

"It was pragmatic, but not particularly heroic," Espio agreed.

"About what I'd expect, really," Amy sneered. Everyone ignored her.

"I was new to the hero thing then," Blaze said defensively. "And besides, I changed my mind quickly enough."

"Oh, that's good," Cream said in relief.

"What changed your mind?" Rouge asked.

Blaze smiled. "My daughter."

…

"EIGHT!"

Cosmo hesitated. "I-I…I don't-"

"NI-eh? What was that?" Red Pine sharply turned his head to the side. "That sounded like…" He gestured, and several vines lashed out, gripping the crumbling wall of a nearby house and tearing it apart, revealing a grisly tableau similar to the one inside the home where Blaze and Cosmo were hiding, a family that had been… _consumed_ by Helheim plants…

And, crouched at the base of…what was left of what were presumably her parents, a little girl. She was a humanoid cat with close-lying orange-yellow fur, a peach muzzle, and long black hair kept in two voluminous ponytails. She also had two triangular and perked ears with peach inner ears, a small black nose, large sharp black eyes, thin arms and legs, and a slim tail. She wore a red hairband and elaborate white and laced cloth-like hair barrettes around her ponytails, along with a red dress with poofy shoulders, black straps on the cuffs, a black collar, a pair of white wings growing from her back, and white laces on the lower rim. Her dress also had black outlines around the waist and shoulders, and a black area on her front skirt with white fasteners. Additionally, she wore white gloves with red backs and laced cuffs, black arm wrappers around her wrists and pointy black and red high-heeled boots.

But as the girl recoiled, crying out in terror from the sight of Red Pine and the Inves as they advanced towards her, Blaze stiffened, seeing…someone different. _Another kitten, but lavender in fur with a violet coat, huddled in fear next to a pair of smoldering corpses as a group of slavering monsters made of lava stalked towards her, molten rock dripping from their jaws. There was a horrific, world-rending roar, and the monsters paused as a huge shadow fell over them, and they and the kitten both looked up to see the nightmarish visage of…of…_

Blaze blinked and shook herself back to reality. _Was…was that_ me? _But…I'm a demon queen or archfiend of some kind, the most powerful being in…wherever I'm from, how could I have been so…so small and helpless? Well…I suppose even the strongest have to start_ somewhere… _maybe I was a very low-ranking demon, but clawed my way to the top? Something about that feels…_ partially _right, but…_ She snarled and regained focus. _What am I doing, thinking about this now?! There are more important things to deal with! Whatever that memory was, it can wait until later!_

Cosmo gasped. "No! What…what is he doing?!"

Red Pine gestured, and more vines shot out, grabbing the kitten and pulling her out into the open. She screamed and sobbed in terror as the general dangled her over one of the Inves. "Change of plans, Princess! Clearly you don't care what happens to your guard…but a soft-hearted fool like yourself couldn't possibly stand by and watch a little girl get hurt, could you? Come out here now…" The Inves' head suddenly split apart, revealing it was actually nothing more than a _huge_ mouth, filled with gnashing teeth the length of Blaze's forearm. "Or the girl becomes this beast's lunch!"

The kitten's screams of terror echoed through Blaze's ears, and once more she saw the lavender child from her memory overlaid on top of her. "B-Blaze, what-" Cosmo started.

"We're going," Blaze said with a calmness that did not match the roiling inferno within her, her fury stoking the flame within, her power increasing exponentially with every breath.

Cosmo blinked. "What?"

"Change of plans. We're going out there, and we're going to save Damil and that child," Blaze said, flames dancing in her golden eyes.

"What changed your mind?" Cosmo asked, surprised and delighted by this turn of events.

"I'm supposed to be a hero now, right? And a true hero would _never_ turn their back on a crying child," Blaze said, flashing a fierce grin. She glanced at Cosmo. "When we go out there, let me take the lead. I'll take care of everything."

Cosmo nodded. "Okay. I _knew_ you'd come around!"

Outside, Red Pine glanced around in annoyance. "Really? Threatening a helpless child didn't do it? I really thought that would work… Oh well, guess I'll just have to-"

"Stop!" Cosmo commanded as she and Blaze stepped out of the ruined home they had been sheltering in. "That's enough, Red Pine! I'm here!"

Damil gasped. "Princess, no-urk!" He gasped as the vines tightened, thorns digging deeper into his skin.

"Ah, Princess!" Red Pine sneered. "I _knew_ you wouldn't be able to resist a lure like that! Your soft heart has always been your biggest weakness… Well, other than your lack of any combat ability, I suppose." He paused, noticing Blaze. "And I see you managed to somehow find a survivor! Whoever you are, I commend you for somehow evading my plants and my Inves! I don't suppose this child is yours? I see a bit of a resemblance… Then again, all you disgusting mammals look alike to me." He shrugged. "No matter. Here's what's going to happen, Princess. You and your friend there are going to hand yourselves over to me, and all of us are going to go see your father. He's been _very_ worried about you."

"I'll bet he has," Cosmo growled. "And what about your hostages?"

"Oh, they're coming with us," Red Pine said casually. "For insurance, to make sure you behave yourself. And who knows? I might just let them go once I don't need them anymore… Then again, I might _not_ …" He chuckled cruelly.

Cosmo growled and clenched her fists. She opened her mouth, but Blaze held an arm out and stepped forward. Cosmo nodded and took a step back, deferring to her. "Allow me to make a counter offer," she said calmly.

Red Pine burst into surprised laughter. "A counter offer?! Well, by all means! This should be entertaining…"

"You're going to put down the girl and the soldier, and you and your army are going to leave this village and never return," Blaze said with an iciness that did not match the flames burning inside her. "In return, I will not hunt you down and make you pay a billionfold for every single life you have taken this day and every cruelty you have inflicted upon these poor people. Make no mistake, I _will_ destroy you eventually, but it need not be this instant. I think that a fair trade, don't you?"

Red Pine laughed in disbelief. "The audacity on this one! Where did you manage to find this wretch, Princess? Clearly she doesn't know who she's dealing with!"

"You're right, I don't," Blaze said casually. "Why should I bother remembering the name of someone I'm going to destroy?"

Red Pine stopped laughing and regarded Blaze curiously. "… You really mean that, don't you? You actually think you can defeat me?"

"I don't think it, I _know_ it," Blaze said coolly.

"Then clearly you are the most delusional individual I have ever encountered," Red Pine sneered. "And I've fought cultists who worship chaos gods!"

"I take that to mean you're rejecting my generous offer?" Blaze asked, raising an eyebrow.

"If by generous offer you mean batshit insane proposal, then yes, I do," Red Pine said.

Blaze shrugged. "Very well then. In that case, I only have one more thing to say."

"And that would be?" Red Pine asked.

Blaze grinned, and her fangs somehow seemed to sharpen and grow longer and more numerous. "Please grit your teeth, because I'm going to punch them out."

Red Pine hesitated in confusion. "Eh? What do you-"

Blaze did not teleport. While she had many powers and abilities, teleportation was not one of them. The fact that one instant she was standing before Cosmo and the next she had her fist planted in Red Pine's face with no appearance of any transitional state could be attributed to nothing more than her phenomenal speed. The orange orb making up the front of his helmet shattered, and his head was snapped back so far it was astonishing that his neck didn't break, the general crying out in as much surprise as agony as he was flung backwards, smashing through the crumbling façade of a nearby building and causing it to collapse on top of him. As Blaze backflipped from the recoil of her blow, her claws flashed out several times, and the vines holding Damil and the girl were shredded pieces. They didn't have far to fall, however, before Blaze's arms snapped out, grabbing them before they could hit the ground (or in the girl's case, fall into the mouth of a waiting monster), and the next thing they knew, they found themselves being gently lowered to the ground in front of an astonished Cosmo.

"How… How did you-" the astounded Princess asked.

"I'm very fast. Did I forget to mention that?" Blaze asked offhandedly. "Please wait here," she directed to the wounded and incredulous soldier and the awestruck girl. "Things are going to get a little messy in a moment."

This statement was proven accurate when the pile of rubble that had once been a house shattered, and an enraged Red Pine rose to his feet. With the which orb on his helmet gone, his face was visible, revealing the visage of a male Seedrian not too dissimilar from Damil, save for his eyes being rather more bloodshot and unhealthy-looking veins snaking across his skin. "You… You DARE?!" He screamed, voice breaking from his fury, the Inves, who had up to that moment been too stunned by Blaze seemingly one-shotting their leader to react, shrieking and hissing for effect. "You warm-blooded cunt, you just laid a hand on one of the Four Heavenly Generals in service of His Majesty, Dark Oak! I was originally going to let you live as a plaything, but now your life and the lives of all you hold dear are forfeit! Who the hell do you think you are, you filthy vermin?!"

Blaze grinned again, and this time there was something… Darker in her expression. For a moment, her eyes flickered green, her pupils becoming slitted. "Who am I, you ask? Have you not heard the stories? Have you not seen the signs?"

Red Pine blinked in confusion. "What? What do you-"

Blaze threw her head back and chuckled long and low, something sinister in her tone. "You really don't know, do you?" She began walking forward, and even though her steps were light and casual, somehow the ground not only cratered but burst into flame with every foot fall. "Prophecies have warned you of me for untold ages, since before the dawn of civilization." She held out her hands, and balls of flame appeared in them, causing the Inves to hiss and recoil in alarm. "Every culture, society, and species has legends and stories about me and the terror I will bring. Stories about how I will tear down the world as you know it, and leave something completely unrecognizable in its place." The balls of flame rose up in the air, twirled around her head, and suddenly expanded outwards into ghoulish demonic visages of flame, laughing madly and causing the monsters to shriek in panic and scramble away. Even Red Pine flinched, though he tried not to show it. "How I will utterly destroy all who stand against me. How I will bring death to untold billions, until the soil is turned red from the blood of my victims. Parents tell their children to behave, or else I'll come to kill them in the night, and desperately hope that they aren't accidentally telling the truth." The flame spirits shot out from her, swooping low over the heads of the Inves, setting more than a few ablaze. They howled in agony and screamed wildly about as they were engulfed in fire, their comrades drawing back from them in fear as the flames consumed them utterly, not even leaving ashes behind.

"D-don't just stand there, you fools! Get her!" Red Pine yelled frightfully.

Heeding their master's cry, the Inves surged forwards towards the cat, even though every instinct in their primitive minds was screaming at them to run far, far away. Blaze's grin grew wider, wider than it should have been physically possible. "You ask me who I am?" She cried as a corona of flames burst into life around her, the ground she was standing on cratering beneath her. An Inves lunged at her, claws out, swiping at her head. She easily ducked the blow and retaliated with a punch right to the gut that blasted a hole clear through its abdomen and out the other side, causing the beast to disintegrate into embers around her fist. "I am Blaze!"

More Inves charged at her. Flames swirled around her feet, and she suddenly blasted off like a comet, twirling around and around like a fiery tornado and ripping through everything in her path as she zigzagged across the ground with her Burst Dash. "Queen of Demons!"

She formed more fireballs in her hands and started flinging them rapidly in every direction, enveloping every creature they touched in demonic flames which nothing, not even water, could put out. "Chiefest of Calamities!"

She jumped into the air, curled into a ball, wreathed herself in flames, then shot back down, the impact shattering the ground and releasing a fiery wave which disintegrated everything for a few meters around her. "Archfiend of the Abyssal Planes!"

Without warning, several vines suddenly shot out and wrapped themselves around her wrists and ankles, pulling her spread eagle and holding her in place as a group of Inves charged at her, claws out, ready to gut her. Blaze grinned fiercely, eyes flashing, and fire surged out from her, racing along the length of the vines and igniting them as well as the Inves holding them. Instead of an immediate immolation, this was more of a slow burn, allowing Blaze to grip the burning vines and yank on them, pulling them and the screaming, burning monsters towards her, whipping them about and flinging them at the beasts rushing towards her like some sort of ghoulish flail, bowling the Inves over and setting them ablaze. "Flames of Disaster!"

Several Inves sprouted insectoid wings and took to the air, opening their massive jaws and spitting seeds at her. Blaze nimbly dodged the projectiles, jumped into the air, and launched herself towards the nearest creature, spinning horizontally with her right arm before her, striking the Inves with her Fire Claw, causing it to explode in flames and allow her to rebound through the air towards the next one, destroying that as well and allowing her to chain attack all the other airborne beasts, landing stylishly on the ground as all of the monsters exploded in a great conflagration behind her. "Avatar of Iblis!"

"Get her!" Red Pine screamed desperately. "Get her! Get her get her get her GET HER!"

All over the place, the air seemed to unzip (Quite literally. Blaze could even see the zippers!), leaving behind rifts, cracks between dimensions through which a strange, alien forest could be seen, full of plants nearly identical to the ones encroaching upon the village. Dozens and dozens of Inves swarmed out of the cracks, surging towards Blaze in an endless, shrieking tide of claws and teeth. Cosmo gasped, and the wounded Damil struggled to get to his feet for a futile last stand while the little girl just stared, but Blaze…

Blaze just grinned, her fanged smile looking borderline psychotic. "And of course, most importantly… The DESTROYER OF WORLDS!"

Her eyes flashed, and the air surrounding her combusted in a spectacular explosion, expanding outwards in a pyroclastic sphere of destruction which vaporized the 50 or so Inves that had been about to reach her, the shockwave from the blast knocking back or ripping to pieces those who were outside the reach of the flame. The ground split, fissures zigzagging out from Blaze's burning form, gouts of flame bursting out from them and incinerating any nearby monster that hadn't fallen in when the cracks opened. Pillars of fire erupted from the ground all over the place, and several homes and trees were set ablaze, the tortured screams of the lost souls trapped within as they were mercifully burned to death serving as the perfect accompaniment to Blaze's maniacal laughter and an ideal backdrop for the setting… As well as what was about to come next.

…

Everyone stared at Blaze, dumbstruck. "… Okay, that is so fucking metal," said an awed Vector.

"I – AM – IN – LOVE. MARRY – ME!" A besotted Omega cried.

"Sorry pal, she's taken," Sonic said in amusement.

Blaze nodded, taking his hand. "I am at that." Amy fumed.

"I thought that you were in love with Fang," Mighty said.

"I – CAN – BE – IN – LOVE – WITH – ANYONE – I – WANT!" Omega said belligerently. "MONOGAMY – IS – A – FLAWED – ORGANIC – INSTITUTION – THAT – A – SUPERIOR – MACHINE – SUCH – AS – MYSELF – NEED – NOT – ADHERE – TO!"

"But aren't both of the people you're in love with organic?" Rouge asked.

"SHUT – UP," Omega growled.

"That was a pretty good entrance, I suppose," Shadow grunted grudgingly.

"In other words, you're insanely jealous," Rouge said in amusement.

"Am not!" The black hedgehog denied indignantly.

"Blaze, while I'm happy that you rescued that poor little girl and showed that Red Pine meanie who's boss, did… um, did you really need to burn all those people in the trees to death?" Cream asked.

Blaze sighed. "Unfortunately, there was nothing else I could do for them, Cream. There was no way to save them from those trees, so death was the only kindness I could give them. The fact that it only served to make me look even more impressive and intimidating was a useful side effect."

"A likely story," Amy grumbled.

"The maniacal laughter was a nice touch, too," Espio observed. "You really sounded as if you were enjoying yourself."

Blaze flushed. "Well, it was the first time I'd been able to let loose in billions of years. Is it any wonder I went a little over the top?"

…

"Princess… What have you done?" Damil whispered, staring at the cackling, flaming cat in horror as more and more of the village was consumed in fire. "You said you came here to free some legendary warrior… But it looks to me as if you have summoned a demon of old, an ancient evil even worse than what your father has unleashed! She will destroy us all in fire! Which, need I remind you, is not exactly the favored element of our race?"

"She shall do no such thing," Cosmo said sharply. "And I would ask you never to say such things again. A demon she may be, but evil she is not. Would a monster such as the one you envision her have bothered to intercede to save a little girl, let alone yourself? Whatever she is, wherever she is from, she has agreed to help us in exchange for nothing at all… And aside from that, sometimes it takes a monster to fight a monster."

"My apologies, Princess," Damil said, chastened. "I shall not speak out of turn regarding your friend again."

"See that you don't," Cosmo huffed.

"She's… Incredible…" The little kitten whispered, wings twitching as she stared at the adult cat in awe as she incinerated the fiends responsible for the destruction of her village and the death of her family with ease.

"You aren't the only one who can call up some friends, Red Pine!" Blaze taunted, seeing the horrified and dismayed look on Red Pine's face. "Let me introduce you to a few of mine!"

With a marginal effort, she reached out, calling across the gulfs of space and time…

And her call was answered. In bursts of flame, they appeared. Hideous creatures, diabolical in appearance, their forms made of lava and stone given life, glowing with red or purple light emanating from the demonic fires fueling their life force. Lizard-like Biters and Stalkers snarled and howled and snapped at the air. Gigantic vaguely humanoid Golems and Titans loomed over all, smashing their fists together and stomping the earth. Worms burst out of the ground, shrieking from their three – mandibled mouths. Birdlike Takers formed in the air, flapping and screeching at the winged Inves for daring to share the same skies as them.

"What – what is this?!" Red Pine stammered in disbelief.

"Oh, just a few friends," Blaze said, stroking the head of a Stalker and causing it to sit down, painting and wagging its tail in delight. "Aren't they lovely? And a sight more appealing than those nasty Inves of yours, in my own opinion."

The kitten gasped. "Whoa!"

"Err, Princess, not to countermand your earlier order, but… Are you sure about her? Heroes usually don't summon demonic minions," Damil said uncomfortably.

"I'm… Sure it's fine," Cosmo said, looking slightly uncertain. "Er, Blaze? You never mentioned that you could summon demonic minions before now."

"Oh, didn't I?" Blaze said casually. "Well, it must have… Slipped…" She paused, blinking in confusion. "Wait a minute… I didn't actually know I could do that either… How did…"

Inside her, the flame flickered helpfully, providing an unspoken answer to her question. Blaze frowned. Well, that was interesting… Had she always had minions, but forgotten how to summon them until now? Did the minions belong to the flame, and it had summoned them through her to help out? She'd been hosting this other… Essence for billions of years, and even though it was the source of her power, there was still very little she knew about it, or herself.

Well, that would be a mystery she'd have to solve later. Right now, she was in the middle of the fight, and had some monsters she could sense would loyally and obediently follow her commands would be of great use to her. She wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth, the time for introspections and soul-searching could wait until after it was over.

…

Everyone stared at Shadow. "What?!" He snapped.

"Wait, wait, wait. You can summon demonic minions?!" Charmy demanded.

Blaze nodded. "I can indeed."

"… That is AWESOME," the bee gushed.

"And proof that she's evil! Evil! EVIL!" Amy screeched. Nobody paid attention to her.

"Wait, if you can do that, why haven't you before now?" Espio asked.

Blaze shrugged. "I haven't really needed to. I'm more of a hands-on fighter, and most of the adventures we've been on together haven't really necessitated a need for my minion summoning power, since most of the armies of foes we fight aren't big enough to justify calling forth an army of my own. Additionally, they aren't really as useful as you'd think."

"HOW – CAN – AN-ARMY-OF-DEMONIC-MINIONS-NOT-BE-PARTICULARLY-USEFUL?" An incredulous Omega asked.

"Tell me, how effective would you say the average army of robots or monsters or whatever foe we're encountering at the moment are against warriors of our caliber?" Blaze asked.

They considered this for a moment. "Not very," Espio admitted.

"Yeah, Eggman really needs to step up his game if he really thinks he's ever going to be able to beat us," Knuckles bragged.

Blaze spread her hands. "Well, there you go. While my demonic minions may look very fearsome and imposing, ultimately they are about as strong as your standard cannon fodder. Oh, to be fair, against your average person or soldier they would be almost impossible to defeat, but for people like us – or the people we fight against on a regular basis – they aren't really anything to write home about. Most of the beings I fight back home are strong enough to be able to easily dispatch my minions either through strength of arms or banishing spells – which, let me tell you, have become very widespread since just about everyone knows by now I have the ability to summon minions to do my bidding – so pretty much the only time I feel I can justify calling them forth are when I'm about to wage a battle against a massive army too large to take out on my own. Even then, they're basically there to sacrifice themselves to spare my less expendable troops, who can't simply be summoned back to this plane every time they are vanquished. These days, I only summon them to bolster my armies for especially large engagements, use them as disposable scouts or assailants, or put them to use doing the dirty or dangerous jobs too risky for my citizens to do themselves."

"… Huh. That actually makes a good deal of sense," Rouge admitted.

"Wow, who would've thought being able to summon army of demonic minions to do your bidding wasn't really all that practical?" Mighty quipped.

"They have their uses," Blaze said. "It's just that they're more bark than bite in the end."

"Can you show us one?" Silver asked.

"Certainly." Blaze gestured, and in a burst of flame a snarling Biter materialized. Everyone tensed up… But then Blaze reached out and scratched the monster behind its ears, causing it to sit on its hind legs and start panting, tail wagging happily, causing the fearsome hell beast to look more like a big monster dog.

"Puppy!" Cream squealed.

"Yes, it has about the same mentality as one," Blaze agreed as the Biter rolled over and she started rubbing its belly, causing it to growl in delight. "I wouldn't recommend you try petting this one, though, you might not get your hand back. You know, what with its skin being made of molten lava and all that."

"Awww," Cream said in disappointment, ears drooping.

Vector frowned. "Wait a minute… Something about that looks… Familiar…" He gasped and snapped his fingers. "Wait a sec! There were things like that in that weird Crisis City place we found back during the whole Time Eater thing! You know, the place that none of us recognized?"

"… Hey, yeah, that's right," Rouge realized. "What were they doing there?"

"Maybe Crisis City is their plane of origin?" Shadow suggested.

"But if that's the case, then why was it there? It had nothing to do with any adventures Sonic's ever been on," said the confused Mighty. "Unless it was there because of his relationship to Blaze, but even that seems kind of tenuous."

"There's a good explanation for that, one which… Well, I haven't gotten to yet," Blaze said apologetically.

"NATURALLY," Omega grumbled.

"So… Exactly how were you able to summon those things anyway? From what you said, it sounded like you were just as surprised by this ability as everyone else, like it was something that… Flame of yours just made happen?" Espio inquired.

"Something like that," Blaze said, stroking the Biter on the chin.

"And that didn't strike you as it all suspicious?" The chameleon asked.

"A little," Blaze admitted as Sonic handed her a Chili Dog and she fed it to her eager monster. "But I didn't really have time to worry about that right then, and in any event… Well, I felt like I could trust it. I know that might sound weird, but it's true. And as it later turned out, I was right to do so… But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's what happened next…"

…

With a mental command, the demonic beasts surged outwards from their mistress, smashing into the startled horde of Inves. Biters and Stalkers lunged at the beasts, tearing them apart with their fangs and claws or setting them ablaze with their fire or laser breath. Golems and Titans waded into the masses of monsters, smashing them with their feet and fists and occasionally hurling huge molten boulders to crush and incinerate anything in their path. Takers swooped around, engaging the winged Inves with claws and fireballs, occasionally raining destruction down on the unguarded groundlings whenever they got a chance. Worms submerged and burst out of the ground without warning, the eruption from their entrances blasting away any nearby Inves and stunning the rest long enough for them to spew fireballs at them or smashed them with their great segmented heads. More and more Inves rushed out of dimensional cracks to fight the new interlopers, and more and more demons materialized in bursts of flame to counter them, quickly turning the ravaged town into a battleground, homes and buildings and cursed trees set ablaze by the ferocity of the fight.

Not a single monster approached Red Pine. All of them knew that he was their mistress's prey.

"How… How is this possible?!" Red Pine asked in disbelief, staring around him as his army was being ripped to pieces and set on fire by the demonic invaders, the monstrous plants he'd unleashed on this poor town being reduced to ashes by the hellfire being casually tossed all about. "Dark Oak assured us that none would be strong enough to stand against our new power!"

"Dark Oak was wrong," Blaze said as she calmly approached the general, backhanding an Inves that lunged at her from behind without even looking at it. "Or he lied. I'm open to either possibility."

"You dare to disrespect my liege?!" Red Pine snarled.

"A king who would employ a butcher like yourself, or unleash such horrors upon his own people, is not a monarch worthy of the name," Blaze said coldly, forming a fireball in her paws. "After I take you out for what you've done to the people here, I'm going to send him to join you in hell."

She hurled her projectile, but Red Pine vanished in a swirl of leaves before the projectile could hit him, reappearing on top of a nearby building. "You'll have to catch me first!" He laughed, teleporting away again and reappearing on a more distant roof.

Snarling, Blaze summoned a Taker, jumping up as it swooped down and allowing it to grab her by the shoulders in its talons, carrying her into the air and giving her a bird's eye view of the town. Fires were burning everywhere as her minions waged war with the denizens of Helheim, but she only had eyes for her target. She quickly spotted Red Pine teleporting from rooftop to rooftop, and commanded her winged servant to descend, hurling fireball after fireball at the general.

Red Pine evaded her blasts, chaotically warping all over the place in bursts of leaves, making it difficult to predict where he would appear next. Deciding to get ahead of the game, she formed a pair of much larger fireballs in her hands, and the next time the general appeared, threw them not at him, but at the buildings on either side of him. The fiery bursts struck true, exploding and setting the buildings ablaze, as well as those adjacent to them, leaving the Crimson warrior with only one avenue of escape that wouldn't be onto a burning structure – a large square, with several small twisted trees jutting out of the ground, the moans of the poor souls trapped inside drowned out by the chaotic violence engulfing the village. With a grunt, Red Pine teleported down to the middle of the square, and Blaze commanded the Taker to release her, falling from its talons towards the ground below. Flames burst from her feet to slow her descent, and she landed in the square in a shower of embers, facing Red Pine. "No more running!"

"I quite agree," the general said with a snicker as massive roots erupted from the ground around the periphery of the square, growing across every building's doors and windows and blocking the streets, sealing all the exits. "You've fallen right into my trap!"

Blaze raised an eyebrow. "Oh? And what makes you so sure you haven't fallen into mine?" She snapped her fingers, and the plant barriers enclosing the square suddenly burst into flames, creating walls of fire which would serve as no impediment to her… But the same could not be said for her opponent, who growled in frustration.

…

"Wait, did you just CREATE the requisite barrier for a boss arena?" Asked an amazed Mighty. "I thought that was something only the bad guys could do!"

"That's because she IS a bad guy!" Amy yelled. Nobody listened to her.

"I find that it often pays to make sure that when I am fighting a powerful opponent, I have as many advantages in my favor as I can create," Blaze explained. "Plus, not only does it look pretty impressive, it cuts down on the number of irritating recurring foes I have to fight."

The heroes nodded in understanding. "I hear that," Knuckles lamented.

"If more of us could do that, we'd probably have an easier time, and far fewer enemies," Shadow said wistfully.

"BORING," Omega said disinterestedly.

…

"No matter," Red Pine said, his cape billowing dramatically behind him. "You claim to be a destroyer of worlds, demon… But I am empowered by Helheim, a forest which has also consumed countless worlds! Why don't we see which is stronger?"

"Given the performance so far, I'd say the answer is obvious," Blaze said dismissively.

"Ah, but you've only been fighting the bottom of the heap! Let's see how you fare against a TRUE warrior!" Red Pine extended a hand into the air, the pineapple emblem on his chest glowing.

" _ **PINEAPPLE! LOCK ON!"**_ a disembodied voice shouted.

A circular dimensional crack unzipped over his head, and what appeared to be a giant pineapple made of metal descended from it, landing on top of his head and splitting apart in a shower of what Blaze really hoped was just pineapple juice, unfolding out and downwards to form yellowish spiky armor over his chest, back, and shoulders. His helmet had been repaired and turned yellowish and spiky as well, with tufts of green spikes growing from the tips of his shoulders and the top of his head. A flail with a large metal pineapple at the end instead of a ball dangled from his hands.

" _ **SOIYA! PINEAPPLE ARMS: PULPERIZE & DESTROY!"**_ the disembodied voice shouted.

"This is my stage now!" Red Pine declared.

Blaze blinked. "What."

…

"I'll second that," Knuckles said. The others nodded in agreement.

"The heck was that?" Mighty asked.

"It's a manifestation of the power of Helheim," Blaze explained.

"A manifestation of the power of the Eldritch world-eating forest is having giant fruits drop on your head and unfold into armor and weapons?" Charmy asked.

"Pretty much, yeah," Blaze said. "It's not really as silly as it sounds."

"It's not that much stranger than some of the things we run into regularly, when you think about it," Tails pointed out, which they grudgingly agreed was true.

"I don't like pineapples," Cream complained. "I much prefer grapes, or melons, or bananas."

Blaze grimaced. "It took me very long time to like ANY of those after this…"

…

"Behold my power!" Red Pine boomed, swinging his flail about and smashing it into the ground, cratering it and releasing a little splash of pineapple juice.

"Did… Did a giant pineapple just…" Blaze said, utterly bewildered.

Red Pine sighed. "Every damn time… Yes, that was a giant metal pineapple. Yes, that was supposed to happen. No, it's not ridiculous, I'm actually extremely powerful in this form and I expect you to respect it."

"And that voice… Where did that come from?" Blaze, still baffled, asked.

"We're not actually sure either, it's just… a thing that happens whenever we do that," Red Pine said awkwardly.

"Ah," Blaze said. She frowned at the weapon and new armor her opponent was wearing. "So…a pineapple?"

"Yes. What of it?" He asked defensively.

"Well, it's just… Your name is Red PINE, so…" Blaze said awkwardly.

"Yes, PINEapple. See? It fits!" Red Pine insisted a little too quickly.

"Oh. I… I assumed that you were named after the tree, not the fruit, is all," Blaze said, looking embarrassed.

Red Pine grimaced. "Well, actually… To be honest, I WAS, but… The pinecone-themed weapon was a yari, and I've never been very good with those-plus it seemed more like the weapon for a foot soldier than a general like myself-so I decided to choose the other fruit that sounded like my name when I found out that it would allow me to use a weapon I actually had some measure of proficiency with. I was actually a lot luckier compared to the others, they had a bit of a trickier time choosing a weapon and fruit motif since none of them had names similar to the available powers… Well, Zerkova didn't mind so much, I suppose, he's always liked walnuts and going at things with his fists…"

Blaze made a mental note of that. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me what the other two use?" She inquired.

"No, because you will never face them!" Red Pine declared. "For I, Red Pine, of His Majesty Dark Oak's Four Heavenly Generals, shall slay you before you become a threat to my master and his plans! Have at you!" With a laugh, he teleported away in a swirl of leaves.

Blaze tensed, her ears sticking straight up as she scanned the area for the faintest sign of her foe's reappearance. The instant she heard the sound of leaves, she whirled about and hurled a fireball right at Red Pine, but the general immediately teleported away before the projectile could hit, laughing as he warped all over the field, moving in no discernible pattern that Blaze could exploit to predict where he might appear next, whirling his flail over his head, the weapon moving faster and faster with each subsequent appearance. Finally, and without warning, he paused in his teleports and flung the great spiky pineapple at her. Her reflexes kicked in and she dodged out of the way of the flail before it could smash into her, hurling a fireball at Red Pine as he pulled the pineapple back towards him. Unfortunately, the general retracted his weapon faster than her projectile could reach him, and he teleported away just before the fireball could strike him.

 _He's pretty fast_ , she thought to herself in annoyance, eyes and ears sharp as Red Pine started teleporting all over again, building up momentum for his next flail attack. _I'm not going to be able to hit him unless I can find some way to get him to stand still for more than a second-_ She paused her train of thought to dodge another blow from the flail, the pineapple shattering the ground where she'd just been standing. _Okay, doesn't look like it's the kind of weapon that'll get stuck in the ground and allow me a free hit,_ she resumed thinking as Red Pine started teleporting again. _Maybe it'll get stuck in something softer? Something like-_

As she dodged another pineapple strike, her eyes caught upon one of the twisting, moaning trees. _Ah. That will do,_ she thought, feeling a slight twinge of guilt and prematurely asking whatever tortured soul was trapped in the tree for forgiveness for what she was about to do.

She started rushing all over the battlefield in a seemingly random pattern, forcing Red Pine to teleport faster and further to try and catch up to her, zigzagging here and there to dodge his attacks. She kept an eye on him as she dashed about, noting the speed with which he twirled his flail faster and faster whenever he briefly reappeared, and then, right when she estimated he'd reached top speed, she stopped in place. Red Pine materialized out of thin air, flung his pineapple at her…

And she dodged it, causing the flail to instead smash into the tree she'd been standing in front of, its spikes digging into the warped wood of the plant and causing whatever villager was stuck inside to moan slightly louder, blood oozing from the tree like sap. "Huh? What are you-"

The general tugged on his flail, only to discover that it was stuck fast. Knowing she only had seconds to spare before he got over his surprise and did something, Blaze dashed forwards, leaping into the air and slamming into Red Pine with a mighty Fire Claw. Red Pine cried out in pain as he was flung backwards, the flail ripping out of the side of the tree and causing even more blood to ooze out of it. As Blaze was flung back from the recoil of her blow, she saw the large spiky ball of the pineapple flying past her towards its master. Getting an idea, she spun about in a flaming whirlwind kick, striking the pineapple and flinging it into Red Pine's chest, causing him to gasp in pain as the orb on his chest was cracked, and he was flung to the ground, bouncing and rolling over a few times before coming to a stop.

Blaze dashed over for another attack, but the general quickly teleported away. "That," he grunted when he reappeared some distance away. "Was actually pretty clever. Unfortunately, you won't be repeating a trick like that again."

He raised his flail to the air, started twirling it over his head… And much to Blaze's astonishment, the pineapple GREW, becoming bigger and bigger with every revolution. With a fierce cry, the red general hurled his flail outwards and swung it to the side, causing the much-enlarged pineapple to smash through every tree in its path, reducing them to bloody splinters in a great cacophony of shattering wood and screams of agony. Blaze barely managed to avoid being crushed by the giant pineapple by rolling under the cable connecting it to the general's hands as it passed over her, and when she got back to her feet, she was alarmed to see that the arena had become a much more level place; nothing left of the trees except for a few broken, bleeding stumps jutting out of the ground here and there.

Red Pine cackled as he pulled his flail back to him, the pineapple shrinking back to a much more manageable size. "Let's see how you fare without a trick like that, shall we?" He sneered before he teleported, resuming his attack.

…

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up!" Vector interrupted. "Did that guy just… Change the battlefield and adapt his tactics to prevent a weakness from being exploited again?!"

"So it would seem," said a disturbed Shadow.

"…They can DO that?!" Vector said incredulously.

"I thought bad guys weren't allowed to do something like that," Knuckles said. "Figured it was a rule or something."

"Does that mean Blaze was actually fighting a SMART opponent?" Amy wondered, bewildered. "I didn't think those actually existed!"

"Well, I guess they can't all be giant robots with predictable attack patterns, glaringly obvious weak spots, and cockpits which are exposed for no apparent reason," Rouge said.

…

 _Okay, new plan,_ Blaze thought as she ran around the battlefield, both to buy herself some time to think and make it trickier for Red Pine to hit her with his flail. _I don't think there's anything else around here I can use to get his flail stuck on. He can still teleport away faster than I can attack him. If I can't make him hold still, how can I hit-_

Her ears twitched, and she bent over backwards just before the flail could slam into her side, the spiked ball passing so close above her that her whiskers were brushed aside by its spikes. As the pineapple shot over her head, Red Pine yanked it back to retract it to him…

 _Oh. There's an idea._ Her hand shot up, grabbing the cable as it passed over her. She was immediately yanked off her feet, and pulled bodily towards the startled Red Pine. "Wh-what-" he stammered just before she plowed feet first into his chest, releasing a blast of flames from her heels which flung both of them away from each other, further damaging the general's chest armor. As she flew backwards through the air, she again struck the airborne pineapple with a flaming kick, sending it hurtling towards Red Pine…

Who managed to regain his footing and caught the pineapple in his free hand before it could strike him. "Sorry, that's not going to work again either," he sneered as spikes sprouted from the lower half of the cable, ensuring that she wouldn't be able to grab it again to repeat this trick.

…

Everyone stared at Blaze in wordless awe. "This guy is GOOD," said an incredulous Mighty.

"Why can't more of our enemies be that smart?" Shadow complained.

"Because then it would be that much harder to defeat them?" Cream suggested.

"SOME-OF-US-RELISH-THE-CHALLENGE," Omega said.

…

Red Pine resumed his assault, teleporting all over the place before flinging his flail. Once more, Blaze found herself on the defensive, racing all over the place to dodge his attacks while trying to think of a good counter. _Okay, so it looks at the same tricks aren't going to work twice on this guy,_ she thought as she barely managed to evade another flail smash. _I can't trick him into getting his flail stuck on something, I can't use his weapon to get closer to him, he'll teleport away any time I try to attack him from a distance or close up… There's got to be something I can do, but what?_

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a dogfight between several flying Inves and her Taker minions. _Oh. That might work._

She stopped running, standing in place, body tense and senses extended to their maximum as Red Pine wildly teleported everywhere, waiting for him to make his move. _Come on… Come on…_

The general reappeared some distance away, arm swinging forward to hurl the flail at her. _Now!_

Her eyes flashed as she exerted a measure of her will…

And, without warning, a Worm suddenly erupted from the ground right beneath Red Pine, snatching him up in its tripartite jaws and ferociously thrashing him about. "AAAARGH WHAT IS THIS WHAT IS HAPPENING?!" He screamed.

…

"Wait, I thought you said you DIDN'T summon minions for your fights," Knuckles interrupted.

"I USUALLY don't," Blaze clarified. "However, keep in mind that this was my first real fight since being released, I wasn't yet at full power, and this guy was really, really annoying me." She shrugged. "Plus, I can afford to be pragmatic sometimes."

…

Knowing that she didn't have long before Red Pine would recover his senses and break free, Blaze leapt into action, jumping into the air and slamming into the general with a Fire Claw, knocking him free from the Worm and slamming him into the ground rather painfully. She nodded in thanks to her minion, and if gurgled before vanishing back into the ground. "You… You BITCH!" Red Pine snarled as he staggered to his feet. "You dare to bring an underling into a duel between warriors?! I should summon the full might of my army here to teach you a lesson for that, but fortunately for you, in spite of your flagrant cheating, I shall continue to abide by the terms of combat. After all, unlike a demon such as yourself, _I_ still have my honor!"

Blaze stared at her opponent in incredulous disbelief for a moment, which quickly turned into outrage. "Honor? HONOR?! You attacked an innocent village, slaughtered everyone in it or fed them to your monstrous plants, and are helping your evil ruler oppress and torment the people you were sworn to protect! Where's the honor in that?!"

"I swore an oath of loyalty to serve my King in all things," Red Pine declared. "If he commands that I put his realm to the sword, then that is what I shall do!"

"A King who would command the destruction of his own nation is no king at all," Blaze said in disgust.

"And what would you, a self-proclaimed destroyer of worlds and archfiend, know of such things?" Red Pine sneered. "You condemn me for my actions, when you have no doubt ravaged far more nations and ended more lives than I? You hypocrite!"

That actually gave Blaze pause for a moment. After some consideration, she said, "That may be true, but at least it was my PURPOSE to destroy worlds, what I was created to do, and something I've turned away from. You, on the other hand, were a defender of the realm who has chosen to betray the people he was supposed to protect because his insane monarch told him to… And, I suppose, because he offered you a great deal of power as incentive. Which of us, then, is the greater monster?"

Red Pine snarled. "I will not be lectured to by a fiend like yourself! Take note, because this is where things get REALLY serious!"

The general quickly made good on his word. His teleports became even more frequent and chaotic, and the moments where he appeared lasted less and less. He threw and retracted his flail even quicker than before, and to make things even more complicated, he often feinted attacks to make it almost impossible to predict when or where he was actually going to strike. Even with her feline reflexes, his flail blows were getting closer and closer to hitting her. If Blaze didn't think of something soon, it was only a matter of time before she found herself in serious trouble.

Fortunately, she'd already anticipated something like this might happen, and half the reason she'd engaged Red Pine in debate earlier was so she could have time to formulate her next counterattack. And, after studying the general's movements over the last few minutes, she thought that it had a good chance of working. _Before, he changed the terrain to his advantage,_ Blaze thought as she dodged another attack, gathering her power. _I see no reason I cannot do the same._

Hands burning, she slammed her palms into the ground, channeling her fury and power into the earth. The ground glowed white-hot as incredible heat surged through it, causing it to melt and dissolve into lava. The molten rock had no effect on Blaze other than feeling pleasantly warm on her feet, but the instant Red Pine reappeared, he howled in agony as his feet burst into flames, promptly teleporting to the top of one of the buildings surrounding the battlefield. He danced about frantically, trying to put out the flames on his feet. "What… How did you… Why-"

Blaze smirked. "I've noticed that while you teleported everywhere, you don't actually seem to be capable of flight. As such, I predicted that altering the ground so that you would no longer be able to set foot on it might make things a bit easier for me."

"… Very clever indeed," Red Pine growled grudgingly. "You truly are a cut above most of the others I have fought since obtaining this power… However, if you think this makes things easier for you, you're dead wrong."

The pineapple emblem on his chest glowed, and suddenly several dozen dimensional crack unzipped all over the place, at varying elevations and placed all over the battlefield and the air above it. Blaze frowned in puzzlement. "I thought you said you weren't going to summon any Inves. That it would besmirch your 'honor.'"

"Oh, I'm not going to be summoning any Inves," Red Pine chuckled as he twirled his flail, building up momentum. He flung the pineapple into one of the cracks…

And Blaze's eyes widened in astonishment as it shot out of a different crack, flew right into another one, exited from a different crack, entered another one, and so on and so forth, zigzagging from crack to crack all across the battlefield, passing between dimensions with ease. Her eyes narrowed as she realized there were about half a dozen cracks ringing her, swiftly figuring out what was coming.

Sure enough, the pineapple eventually shot out of one of the cracks surrounding her. She dodged the blow, then rushed towards the crack as the flail was pulled back into it, hoping to follow it back to its master…

Only for it to zip shut in her face, along with all the other cracks. "You didn't think I'd make it that easy, did you?" Red Pine chuckled, opening several more cracks and hurling his flail into another one.

 _And yet you reopened all the cracks in the exact same place!_ Blaze noted. As the pineapple zigzagged from crack to crack, she leaped into the crack that the flail had struck from the last time. Things got… Rather disorienting as she rapidly passed through the alien greenery of Helheim too quickly to look around, exited through another crack back into the burning ruin of the town, fell back into Helheim, and continued shifting from dimension to dimension as she passed through each subsequent crack until…

She found herself exiting a crack and landing right back where she started. "What the-"

The flail shot out of a different crack, and she only barely managed to dodge it. Red Pine laughed as he pulled back the flail, the cracks closing and reopening again. "I _told_ you I wasn't going to make it that easy! What, did you really think I'd be stupid enough to pair up each crack the same way every single time?"

…

"Okay, seriously, this guy is WAY too smart to be just a mid-boss," said a dumbfounded Rouge.

"If all the bad guys in Blaze's world are that smart, suddenly I find myself appreciating the morons we get that much more," Espio commented.

"Yeah, you'd never see Eggman pulling off something that clever," Charmy agreed.

…

Blaze's mind raced as Red Pine hurled his flail into another crack. _Okay_ , she thought. _There has to be a way out of this… But what?_

Getting a flash of inspiration, she spread her hands, a small fireball appearing between each finger, each of them a different color. With a flick of her hands, each fireball shot into one of the cracks surrounding her. They flickered in and out of reality as they passed from crack to crack, traveling from this world to Helheim and back again. _Come on_ , she thought anxiously as the flail shot through more and more cracks. _Come on…_

"I don't know what you think you're doing, but I assure you it's not going to-" Red Pine started, when suddenly one of the fireballs – a yellow one – shot out of one of the cracks surrounding him and burst harmlessly against his armor. "What was the point of-"

Blaze jumped through the crack she'd initially thrown the yellow fireball through. Behind his mask, Red Pine's eyes widened in horror as he realized what she was up to. "No… No no no no no!"

Frantically, he willed the cracks to start closing. One by one, they started zipping shut…

Too slow, far, far too slow, the purple feline zipping through each crack just before it could close, getting closer and closer to him by the second. Desperate, Red Pine turned around and hurled his flail at the crack Blaze was due to exit from…

Only for her to launch into a flaming whirlwind kick the instant she exited the crack, knocking the pineapple back into Red Pine's chest, causing him to lose his balance as well as damaging his armor, and ensuring that when Blaze slammed into him with her Fire Claw, he was knocked off his perch and sent tumbling towards the lava below. Fortunately for him, he managed to teleport just before he could hit the liquid flame, reappearing on top of another building across the way. He fell to one knee, panting and clutching his chest, the orb covered in a web of cracks, as he tried to catch his breath.

As Blaze jumped down to the pool of lava and started running towards him, he growled and staggered back to his feet. "That. Is. ENOUGH!" He shouted, armor glowing with yellowish orange light.

" _ **PINEAPPLE SQUASH!"**_ The disembodied voice shouted.

A crack opened over his head, and he threw his flail into it. Blaze stopped, narrowing her eyes, wondering what new wrinkle was about to be thrown into the fight.

She didn't have long to wonder. With a very loud unzipping noise, several dozen cracks opened in the air above the square, almost filling the entire sky save for one conspicuous spot near the edge of the square. Eyes widening in alarm as she realized what was coming, Blaze dashed across the lava field and positioned herself right beneath the patch of open sky just before a pineapple flail shot out of every single crack, smashing into the ground and splashing lava everywhere.

As Blaze shook the molten rock off of her, the cracks zipped shut then reopened again, but this time the empty spot was on the other end of the square. Blaze quickly rushed over to it, making it just as the flails smashed down from the cracks again, pulverizing the lava beneath them.

 _I have to stop this_ , she thought as the cracks then reopened for a third time. _But how?_ Racking her mind for ideas, she quickly dashed for the clear spot in the center of the square just before the flails smashed down again. As the pineapples retracted, she looked up as the cracks zipped shut again, waiting for the next wave…

Except this time, only one crack opened. A big one. One wide enough to encompass everything just above the square. Blaze's eyes widened in horror as she realized what was about to happen. "Oh no."

The pineapple descended, a spiky mass big enough to make a house out of. There was nowhere to run. It came smashing down, splashing lava everywhere and crushing everything beneath it. From his perch, out of range of the waves of displaced lava, Red Pine laughed. "You've put up a good struggle, feline, but now, at last, I have-"

The pineapple started to tremble. The lava started rippling outwards, sloshing against the sides of the square. Red Pine froze. "No."

"Haaaaaahhhhhhh…" Blaze, wreathed in a swirling corona, stood up to her waist in the lava, teeth gritted and back bent as she tried with all her might to keep from being flattened beneath the pineapple, hands wedged between two of the spikes.

"No! No, no, NO! I won! I beat you!" Red Pine screamed in horror. "Why won't you stay dead?! How many lives do you have?!"

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh…" Sweating, straining, Blaze started to straighten up, slowly, slowly lifting the pineapple on top of her.

"No! I will not allow this! You will die, NOW!" Red Pine shouted, glowing with more power.

" _ **PINEAPPLE AU LAIT!"**_ The voice shouted.

Blaze cried out as the pineapple suddenly doubled in size. Its weight too much for her, she started to sink back into the lava again, the pineapple pushing her down until the magma was up to her neck. Her corona started flickering as the red general laughed manically, and her eyes began to close…

 _ **You aren't going to let it end like that, are you? Crushed by a giant pineapple?**_

Blaze's eyes shot back open. She cried out, her corona flaring up again, and she dug deep, drawing upon more and more power. Slowly, gradually, the pineapple begin to rise again.

"No… No, no, no! Stop that! STOP! THAT!" Red Pine shrieked, exerting his power once more and causing the pineapple to increase in size again. Blaze started to sink once more…

When in a swirl of flame, over a dozen Golems and Titans surged out of the lava, grabbing the underside of the pineapple and pushing against it with all their might. Worms rose alongside their more muscular brethren to join them, straining against the pineapple with all the might in their segmented bodies. Takers materialized from thin air and grabbed onto spikes on the sides and top of the pineapple, flapping their wings as hard as they could to help raise the pineapple even the slightest bit to alleviate the pressure on their mistress.

"No! NO! _**NO!"**_ Red Pine screamed in terror, pushing even more power into the pineapple…

And nothing happened. He was at his limit, having exerted so much energy already simply conjuring the giant pineapple to begin with, let alone boosting its size and weight twice. There was nothing he could do but watch in disbelief as, bit by bit, the pineapple rose, exposing Blaze, gradually straightening as the burden on her was lifted, until she was only standing up to her ankles, back straight, a look of pure determination on her face. With an ear piercing howl, her aura burst outwards, enveloping and powering up her minions. In unison, they all gave one great shove (or tug, in the case of the Takers) upwards…

And the pineapple was launched into the air, flying back through the giant crack. "No! That's not possible! THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE!" Red Pine screamed…

And then noticed a very large shadow fell upon him, one growing larger by the second. He looked up to see the gargantuan pineapple falling towards him through the crack over his head. It took several moments for him to realize what was happening. Moments he could've used to teleport, or close the crack, or banish his weapon. But he was so stunned and incredulous by the impossible feat he had just witnessed that by the time it occurred to him that he should be doing any of those things, it was far too late.

And so, when the pineapple descended on him, crushing him and flattening the building he'd been standing on to the ground, there was nothing he could do to stop it. The giant pineapple sat there for a moment, looking just as absurd as it would have if it had been sitting at the bottom of the sea next to a Moai head and a rock, before spontaneously exploding in a massive shower of pineapple juice, the yellowish liquid flooding outwards in every direction, surging down the streets of the town, extinguishing the flames burning all over the place and sweeping the combatants, Inves and demonic minions alike, away. Blaze might have been caught up in the tide as well had not her loyal minions immediately rushed forwards to form a huge wall with their bodies, taking the brunt of the juice with their rocky forms and allowing it to wash over and around them, throwing up massive blinding gouts of steam as it made contact with their molten bodies and the lava covering the ground. Blaze was forced to shield her eyes to keep from getting steam in her eyes, though she wasn't sure to what extent it could actually harm her vision.

When the steam finally cleared, Blaze saw that the lava had been cooled and hardened by the massive amounts of pineapple juice… As had her minions, their interlocking bodies now frozen in stone, a testament to their devotion to her that they were willing to surrender their physical existences just to protect her. The fact that they were not mortal creatures and so could be revived and summoned endlessly from their plane of origin didn't make a difference, it was still a touching gesture, and one Blaze was not unmoved by. "Thank you, my friends," she said softly, gently touching the hardened thigh of a Golem. "I shall not forget your aid this day."

…

"… That. Was. AWESOME!" Charmy squealed.

"And kind of anime," Vector said. "Not that that's a bad thing, or anything."

"That was incredible, Blaze!" Cream gushed. "But… Oh, those poor minions!"

"Not the sort of sentiment one would usually have towards demonic monsters from hell," Shadow noted.

"Don't worry, Cream, they were fine," Blaze reassured the rabbit. "They couldn't actually die because they weren't alive to begin with. They're infernal spirits from another plane given shape in our material reality. Destroying their physical forms merely sends them back to their home dimension, until such time as I need to summon them again."

"Oh! Well, okay then," Cream said in relief.

"DOES-THAT-MEAN-THAT-IF-I-SHOOT-YOUR-PET-THERE, IT-WON'T-ACTUALLY-DIE, JUST-GO-HOME-UNTIL-YOU-BRING-IT-BACK-SO-I-CAN-KILL-IT-AS-MANY-TIMES-AS-I-WANT?" Omega asked.

Cream gasped in horror. "No, please don't!"

"That is correct," Blaze confirmed. "However, I would ask you not to do that, please."

"OH, FINE," Omega grumbled.

"Don't worry buddy, we'll find something for you to kill later," Shadow assured his robot friend.

"WE'D-BETTER," the robot said petulantly.

"That was a pretty intense fight," Mighty commented. "That Red Pine sure took a beating."

"He had it coming," Amy said unsympathetically, a sentiment they could all agree with.

"At least that finally did him in, right?" Knuckles asked.

Blaze grimaced. "Actually…"

"… No way. Seriously?! Just how tough is this guy?!" Asked an incredulous Mighty.

"Seedrians are very resilient, even when not bolstered by the power of Helheim," Blaze said defensively. "I think it's the plant in them."

"IN-MY-EXPERIENCE, PLANTS-ARE-RIDICULOUSLY-EASY-TO-CRUSH, CUT, AND – MY-PERSONAL-FAVORITE – BURN," Omega spoke up.

Amy snorted. "Clearly you never tried gardening. You have any idea how hard is to permanently get rid of a weed?"

"HAVE-YOU-TRIED-BURNING-THEM?" Omega asked.

"How am I supposed to do that without burning down my entire garden?!" Amy demanded.

"I-FAIL-TO-SEE-THE-PROBLEM," Omega said.

Blaze shook her head in amusement. "Anyway…"

…

There was the sound of shifting rubble and splashing pineapple juice, and Blaze's head snapped around. In the crater the great pineapple had made when it descended to earth, still ankle-deep in juice, the flattened debris which was all that remained of the building it had crushed was moving. With a long, low moan and much cursing, Red Pine wrenched himself from the wreckage, not looking too different from the rubble he had just climbed out of. His augmented armor was gone, leaving only his original set of crimson armor, cracked and dented and pulverized all over, the orb on his chest shattered, one of his horns torn off, his cape in tatters, half the orb on his face missing, and from the slow, agonizing way he moved it was clear that he had broken at least one limb and several internal organs, or whatever it was Seedrians had inside of them. Despite herself, Blaze was impressed. In spite of all the punishment he'd taken, the general was still alive, albeit in no condition to fight any longer.

It was time she amended that. She rushed forwards, her footfalls splashing up droplets of pineapple juice as she went and drawing Red Pine's attention. His one visible eye widened in horror, realizing that death was about to claim him…

Until he noticed something. A wicked grin crossed his face, and calling upon the last of his power, he summoned a vine, which shot into one of the battered buildings nearby…

And drew out the little winged kitten from before, depositing her in the general's arms. "Well, well, what have we here?" He crooned as the girl struggled and yelled frantically, but even in his current weakened state, Red Pine's grip was far too strong for her to break free from. "It looks like we had a little spectator for our duel… It seems you have a fan, Miss Blaze! Isn't that just lovely?"

…

Everyone gasped. "No! Not her!" Cream cried as Cheese squealed.

"Okay, this is starting to get ridiculous. Not only will this guy not die, he just keeps getting worse and worse! What's he going to do next, kick a Chao or something?" Vector wondered. Cream gasped and hugged her companion close at that.

…

Blaze skidded to a halt, eyes wide in alarm. _No… It's that girl! What's she doing here?!_

"Blaze!"

Blaze whirled around. "Cosmo?"

The Princess approached, splashing up more pineapple juice with every step as she supported the wounded Damil, who was too injured to walk unaided. "Blaze, the girl, she…" She stopped, noticing the kitten in question was being held in Red Pine's grip. "Oh. I see you found out already."

"What is she doing here? I thought she was with you!" Blaze hissed.

"She ran off when we weren't looking," Cosmo said apologetically. "She said she wanted to watch you fight. I might've caught up to her sooner, but, well…"

"It's not exactly easy to move quickly when you're supporting someone else," Damil grunted. "Princess, I told you should've left me behind."

"And leave you in the middle of a war zone?! There was fire and monsters everywhere, not all them on our side!" Cosmo insisted. "I couldn't just leave you in the middle of that!"

"Princess, it is my duty to protect you, not the other way around," Damil groaned. "Granted, I'm not exactly in any condition to fulfill that duty at the moment…"

"Child, why did you follow me? Surely you must've realized how dangerous it would be!" Blaze demanded of the girl, heart racing.

The kitten trembled, sniffling, tearing up. "B-because… Because I… Because I wanted to…" She gulped, and suddenly there was a shockingly cold expression on her face, if only for a moment. "Because I wanted to see you rip the bastard who destroyed my home and killed everyone I love to pieces with my own eyes."

Blaze blinked in surprise. "… Okay, that's a bit more vicious than I was expecting for someone your age."

Red Pine chuckled, shaking the kitten and causing her to yelp. "Quite the bloodthirsty little runt, isn't she? But then again, it's to be expected of someone with Sphinx blood."

Damil gasped. "Of course… So that's why she has wings!" Cosmo cried.

Blaze had no idea what they were talking about. "I… Feel like I'm missing something here."

"The sphinxes were a legendary race of winged felines, renowned for their longevity, incredible magical power, boundless knowledge… And an unquenchable thirst for conquest," Damil explained. "They managed to carve out an empire which ruled over more than a third of the known world for tens of thousands of years until they are finally overthrown. Their species was hunted to almost extinction, but now and then one of their descendants will be born with identifiable Sphinx traits, depending on the strength of their bloodline."

"Such as wings, and a certain… Affinity for violence?" Blaze asked, regarding the kitten with new light.

"Among other things, yes," Damil said.

…

"Oh, so her having wings isn't just something that all cats have in your world?" Amy asked.

Blaze shook her head. "No, only those with some Sphinx blood in them."

"Can she fly with them?" Rouge asked, curious. "The sphinxes in my kingdom can, but they look… Well, decidedly different from her."

"They do," Blaze confirmed. "We had to work hard to get them functional, as well as teach her how to master her Sphinx magic and warrior instincts… But that's a story for another time."

"I don't understand… Why would they kill all the sphinxes just because some of them formed a big Empire?" Cream asked in confusion. "That's so mean!"

"Some people just don't know when to let go of a grudge," Shadow said. Everyone stared him. "What? I'm over most of mine!"

"Oh, killing them isn't the half of it…" Blaze said darkly.

…

Blaze frowned. "I'm guessing, then, that those who were part Sphinx are not exactly… Popular around these parts."

"Some prejudices take a very long time to die," Cosmo said uncomfortably.

Blaze stared at the kitten for long moment… And for a moment, saw not the yellow part-Sphinx child, but a small, terrified lavender kitten. "You poor thing… You haven't had an easy childhood, have you? The other children, they bullied you mercilessly, didn't they? And the adults turned a blind eye?"

The kitten blinked in surprise and looked at Blaze. "Y-yes. They s-said that my wings were far too pretty for a… A _monster_ like me. And whenever I fought back, and…and really _hurt_ them, that only made everyone angrier."

"Especially because nobody else was lifting a finger to help you, so were angry that you dared to do something as simple as defend yourself," Blaze intuited. "Which only made you angrier still at the blatant injustice and unfairness of it all, compounded by the fact that, deep down, you WEREN'T sorry for how much you hurt them, no matter how much everyone else pushed you to be, because THEY certainly weren't sorry for what they'd done to you, so why should you feel the least bit bad about making them hurt just as bad as they hurt you, if not worse?"

The girl stared at her with a shocked expression. "How did you-"

"I went through the same thing when I was your age. I recognize the signs," Blaze said, only to blink in surprise when she realized what she had just said. She'd been bullied? But she was… She was a demon, why would…

 _Well, I suppose the other demons might've picked on me for one reason or another, back before I became strong enough to destroy them all,_ Blaze rationalized. _It wouldn't be the first time the victim of bullying becomes an even worse monster than their tormentors… And I bet that demonic bullies are far worse than regular mortal ones, and yet… Something feels…_ She shook her head. _Irrelevant. Right now, I have to figure out how to save that girl!_

…

"She was bullied? And… YOU were bullied?" Cream gasped, and then started tearing up. "That's so sad!"

"Wait, then… That means that bit you told Cream before about the other kids being mean to you was true?" Espio asked.

Blaze shrugged. "I didn't say it was ALL a lie."

"No, just most of it," Amy sneered. Blaze frowned at her.

"Bullying isn't cool," Sonic said firmly.

"It's not? Really? I never would've guessed," Shadow said dryly. "Can we continue before this turns into an anti-bullying afterschool special, please?"

"What's wrong with anti-bullying afterschool specials? They serve an important function," Rouge said.

"Oh, I'm not saying the message is wrong, it's just that they very rarely tell you anything HELPFUL about how to deal with bullying. Same with most 'Very Special Episodes,'" Shadow said snidely.

"…He makes a good point," Espio admitted after some thought. The others murmured in agreement.

"Yeah, they certainly never helped _me_ ," Charmy grumbled.

"With bullying?" Tails asked sympathetically.

"No, drugs," the bee said. Everyone stared at him in disbelief. "What? We live in a bad neighborhood, okay?"

…

"This is all very touching," Red Pine said in a tone which indicated he found it anything but. "But I think it's time the girl and I left this place."

He gestured with his free hand, the one not wrapped around the girl's neck, and a dimensional crack unzipped behind him. "No!" Blaze cried out, reaching forward-

"Ah-ah-ah!" Red Pine chided her, wagging a finger mockingly. "One more step, and the girl dies! And I wouldn't recommend any funny business like using some fancy fire trick or summoning any of your minions, or I'll snap her neck like a twig!"

Cosmo gasped. "No!"

"Curse you, Red Pine! If you have even a shred of honor like you, let the girl go!" Damil growled.

"Oh, I would… Except that according to Blaze here, I have no honor left. Funny thing, that," Red Pine sneered. "So, here's how it's going to go. The half-breed and I are going to go through that crack and go far, far away from here. You will not follow us."

"I don't suppose you're going to let her go once you're free from here?" Blaze asked, though she was sure she already knew the answer.

"Of course not, I need some measure of insurance to make sure you don't come after me later on!" Red Pine scoffed, as if it were obvious. "Don't worry, she won't be harmed… Much. But don't worry, she'll stay alive so long as I never have to see your face again… Although, if you continue resisting my Lord, I may just have to take out my frustrations on the most convenient punching bag, just so you know…" The kitten trembled all over, sobbing with terror.

"You monster!" Cosmo shouted, enraged.

"Honorless cur!" Damil snarled.

"Yes, yes, I've heard it all before," Red Pine said dismissively. "I suggest you say your goodbyes, Blaze, for you will never see this girl again."

Blaze clenched her fists as she stared at the kitten. Once again, a vision from what might've been her past stared back at her with wide, frightened eyes.

She made her decision. One that she'd already made long ago, she realized. "You realize, of course," Blaze said, a cool, steely calm breaking over her. "That if you were to kill her, there would be nothing left to protect you from me."

"Blaze, what are you-" a confused Cosmo started.

"Yes, but you aren't going to let me kill her, now are you?" Red Pine retorted.

Blaze raised a hand, a fireball beginning to form in it… But there was something different about this fireball. It seemed denser, hotter, darker somehow, less like a miniature sun and more like a burning hole in reality. "And what if I were to kill her myself? What then?"

A shocked silence descended upon the square, and then Red Pine burst into laughter. "Preposterous. You're bluffing, of course."

"Am I?" Blaze asked, raising an eyebrow. "Have you forgotten? I am a demon. A destroyer of worlds."

"And one who damn near broke my jaw just to save a little girl," Red Pine pointed out. "I rather doubt you'd go to all that effort, then just turn around and kill her."

"How do you know? Maybe I wanted to kill her myself. Maybe I could sense that she was descended from one of the charlatans who imprisoned me in the first place," Blaze suggested.

Cosmo gasped in horror. "Blaze!"

Red Pine laughed again, but there was something nervous to it. "I-I don't believe that for a second," Red Pine stammered uneasily. "Quit playing games and snuff out that fireball already, or I'll kill the girl!"

"No," Blaze said. "You won't."

Red Pine stiffened. "I'll do it! Don't you dare tempt me!"

Blaze snorted. "Please. If you were going to kill her, you would've done so by now… Because we both know the truth: the instant she dies, so do you. And for all your talk about being a brave and mighty warrior, you're terrified of dying, aren't you?"

"Th-that's-" Red Pine spluttered indignantly.

Blaze ignored him. There was nothing more he could say that had any relevance whatsoever. "Child," the cat asked, addressing the half-Sphinx. "What is your name?"

The girl locked eyes with Blaze. She stopped trembling, focusing solely on the face of the other feline, realizing, to her wonder, there was something familiar in it, almost like looking into a mirror. "Honey. My name is Honey."

Blaze nodded. "Honey. That is a fine name. Tell me, Honey, right now, what do you want more than anything in the world?"

Honey's face hardened. "For the bastard holding me to die a painful, horrible, agonizing death."

…

Vector whistled. "Geez. Kid's pretty hard-core."

"I like her immensely," Shadow said.

"LIKEWISE," Omega concurred.

"She seems a bit… Intense…" Cream said nervously.

"How much of her attitude was due to her unpleasant childhood, and how much due to her Sphinx blood?" Espio asked.

"A little of column A, a little of column B," Sonic said.

Tails nodded. "Nature and nurture are often a lot harder to pull apart than many people think."

…

"Th-the mouth on her! Kids say the darndest things, don't they?" Red Pine said uneasily.

"Honey, I have another question for you, and it is very important. Please think very carefully before answering," Blaze said.

"What are you-" Damil started, but Cosmo shushed him.

"What is it?" Honey asked.

"Do you see this orb in my hand?" Blaze asked, referring to the ball which was less a ball of flame than a swirling orb of negative energy. "This is no mere fireball. It is a sphere imbued with the pure power of Destruction, which is my dominion as a Destroyer of Worlds. Anything this touches will be completely destroyed, down to the quantum level, annihilated so thoroughly it will be as if they never existed."

…

"Wait, you can seriously do that?" Asked the startled Mighty.

"I can, yes," Blaze said.

"Then how come you haven't used it on Amy?" Charmy half joked.

"Hey!" the pink hedgehog cried.

Blaze sighed. "I've been tempted to more than once, but Beloved won't let me."

"No annihilating my friends, Blaze," Sonic said good humoredly.

"Yes, dear," Blaze grumbled, rolling her eyes.

"But how's that possible? I thought matter could neither be created nor destroyed," Espio spoke up.

"They can be if you're me," Blaze said smugly.

"PLEASE-MARRY-ME," Omega begged the cat, besotted.

"No," Blaze said.

…

"Now, knowing all that… If I were to tell you that I was about to throw this at you, would you believe me if I assured you that it would not hurt you?" Blaze asked.

"Wh-what?!" Red Pine, Cosmo, and Damil cried.

Honey met Blaze's eyes, unblinking. "Yes."

Blaze nodded. "Do you trust me, then? With your life? With your very soul?"

"Absolutely," Honey said, without the slightest hint of doubt.

Blaze smiled. "Thank you, Honey."

And then, without warning, she threw the orb.

Cosmo and Damil gasped, and Red Pine started and quickly thrust Honey in front of him to serve as a shield…

But an instant before the sphere could smash into the cat's face, it split into four, spreading out around her to encircle the startled Red Pine. "Wh-what?! What is-" he cried in alarm, but was cut off when the four orbs converged on him, impacting and causing him to be immediately consumed in black flames.

The noise he made could not be considered a scream. There were no words for the sound he made, a sound full of unimaginable agony and torment as quantum hellfire consumed him at the subatomic level, erasing him particle by particle from existence. Most physicists would say that matter could neither be created nor destroyed. If any physicist were present to watch what was happening to Red Pine, they would reluctantly have to admit that they were wrong.

The crimson general collapsed to the ground, a wailing mass of dark fire that rapidly collapsed upon itself, shrinking and diminishing by the second as it hungrily consumed itself, burning itself out of existence until eventually there was nothing left but a blackened scorch mark on the ground to indicate that there had ever been anything there.

And Honey?

She had been unharmed, just as Blaze had promised. When the flames consumed Red Pine, his anguished writhing had flung her away, but Blaze had been waiting to catch her, and the two of them watched in silence as the general died. A single ember, a spark of darkness, was cast-off from the roiling inferno as it burned down, alighting upon the cat's cheek and causing a black blaze to form… But she did not flinch, just as she had not flinched, or even blinked, when the orb of pure Destruction looked as if it had been about to strike her. Blaze found her heart swelling with admiration as she gazed upon the kitten, sensing a kindred spirit in the half-breed. _She's going to do great things,_ she realized. _But she's going to need some help to get there. I think I might be up for the task, though._

She smiled at the kitten in her arms, and Honey glanced up briefly and smiled back before returning her gaze to the flames.

…

There was a long silence. "Wow," Mighty said.

"SUPER hard-core," Vector said.

"And… Oddly sweet, for some reason," Cream admitted. "Normally I wouldn't feel that way about two people bonding over watching someone else burning to death, but I couldn't help feeling warm inside after seeing that." She frowned. "Is that weird?"

"No, I kind of felt that way too," Amy admitted.

"Reminds me of some of the fun times I had with my mom when I was younger," Rouge recalled fondly.

"Then again, I wouldn't exactly say that any of us are the most well-adjusted of individuals," Espio said, glancing at Shadow. Most of the others followed suit.

"… Why do you people keep looking at me like that?!" The black hedgehog snapped.

"And was that really, absolutely, definitely the last time you saw Red Pine after that?" Knuckles asked. "Like, he didn't come back later on as a ghost or something?"

"Well, I did have to fight a clone of him when I was fighting my way through Dark Oak's fortress to confront him for our final battle, but that's to be expected for boss rushes in the last dungeon," Blaze said. The others nodded in agreement.

"Was there something significant to Honey receiving a mark from that ember?" Rouge asked.

Blaze nodded. "Very shrewd of you, Rouge. Yes, there was some significance to that…"

…

Once the fire had burned itself out and there was nothing left of the fiend, Blaze turned away and walked back towards Cosmo and Damil. "… That was incredible," Cosmo said, looking like she'd been holding her breath for the last several minutes. "When you threw that ball, I… I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't have doubted you, but for a second, I actually thought-"

"It's fine," Blaze interrupted the Princess. "I can understand why you might have thought that. Even so, I'm surprised that you forgot my promise."

Cosmo blinked in surprise. "Promise?"

"Yes. Don't you remember? I assured you that you and your people could always count on me to protect you," Blaze reminded her friend. She looked down at Honey and smiled again. "I do not believe I could've harmed Honey even if I wanted to."

Cosmo's eyes lit up. "Oh. Oh! I see! That's right, because you're a demon, a vow like that would be binding, wouldn't it? But… Surely there are loopholes…"

"There are," Blaze agreed. "However, I have no intention of exploiting them… Well, unless I _have_ to, anyway."

"Even knowing that, I'm reassured," Cosmo said.

"As am I," Damil spoke up. He closed his eyes and bowed his head. "Ms. Blaze, I owe you an apology. I misjudged you dearly. You may be a demon, and perhaps you did in fact destroy worlds… But I can see now that you have a good heart. You are indeed the hero that was promised to us." He frowned. "Although… Were all the theatrics and bluffing about killing Honey really necessary?"

"I needed time to charge up the attack," Blaze explained. "Also, I was talking to throw Red Pine off his game, make him nervous, doubt himself, make it less likely he'd just murder Honey to spite me."

"I see… A psychological tactic! Most clever," Damil said, impressed.

"It was indeed! Well done, a marvelous performance!" An unfamiliar voice spoke up, causing them all to jump.

"Who said that?!" Blaze demanded, holding Honey to her side with one hand and forming a fireball in the other.

"That voice… It sounds…" Cosmo murmured.

The sound of a slow clap echoed across the square, and a large green-scaled anthropomorphic snake slithered into view, his upper body clad in robes of white cloth and snakeskin and the lengthy tail that made up his lower body winding sinuously along the ground behind him, a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eyes. "Congratulations on your first victory, Blaze! Be warned, though, there are many more battles to come, and each will be more difficult than the last. I believe you'll handle them just fine, if you demonstrate the same level of excellence you showed here today!"

"Who are you?!" Blaze demanded, startled by the strange sensation that washed over her. Her hairs were standing on end, her heart was pounding, her breath was heavy, her palms were sweaty, and she found herself struggling not to tremble… What was this? What was this strange feeling?

 _Fear_ , she realized, much to her surprise. I _am afraid._

And not simply run-of-the-mill, everyday fear, either. No, this was bone-deep, soul shaking terror unlike anything she'd ever experienced. Even when she had been cruelly banished to that hell, she had not felt this scared. Whoever, no, _whatever_ this being was, it terrified not only her, but her flame, in ways she had not thought possible. She glanced down at Honey, and noticed the half-Sphinx looked frightened as well. _Good, so it's not just me_ , she thought in relief. Neither Cosmo nor Damil looked frightened, just surprised, which meant whatever was wrong with this serpent was not just in her head, but something that only her and the girl could sense.

"Who, me? Oh, I'm just a humble snake," the serpent chuckled, which only made Blaze tense even more.

…

"Yeah, and if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you for a good price," Charmy snarked.

"Really? I could use a new bridge, the rope ones I keep making always fall apart every time Angel Island falls out of the sky," Knuckles said. "Or whenever they get too wet. Or when the wind blows too hard. Or when the knots unravel. Or whenever anything lighter than a feather lands on them, and even then, sometimes a feather will do it. I'm not very good at making bridges," he admitted. Charmy facepalmed.

"Gee, this guy isn't the least bit suspicious," Mighty said.

"Really? Because I think he's pretty shady," Knuckles said. Mighty facepalmed.

"Knuckles, please stop talking for a little bit. You're much more attractive with your mouth shut," Rouge said.

"Okay," Knuckles said cheerfully.

Shadow fumed.

…

"Blaze, that's… That's the snake I told you about before! The one who gave me the key, the one who told me about you and how to free you!" Cosmo explained.

Somehow, Blaze was not surprised. "The key to my cell was shattered and scattered across many dimensions, and the spell to access my prison was lost forever. How were you able to obtain them? Who… No, _what_ are you?"

This snake grinned jovially, which only raised her hackles higher. "Good questions! As to how I was able to obtain the key fragments and spell… Well, let's just say I travel to many distant places and learn many things and leave it at that for the moment. As for who I am… Well, that depends on who is asking, or how I feel at the moment, but I suppose that if you _must_ call me something, you might as well call me… Let's see… Sagara. It's not my actual name, of course, but I went by it for a period of my life I look back on fondly, so it's as good as anything else. And as for _what_ I am…"

"Well, I'm not entirely sure I want to tell you that just yet," Sagara's voice said from behind them.

Startled, they whirled around to see that the snake was now standing behind them, only a few meters away. Confused, Cosmo glanced over her shoulder, only to see that Sagara had vanished from where he'd first appeared. "How did he-"

"I do not think we are dealing with an ordinary being, Princess," Damil said, narrowing his eye.

"Gee, what was your first guess?" Honey muttered.

"Don't do that again!" Blaze snapped. That little stunt hadn't done any wonders for her nerves.

Sagara raised his hands apologetically. "Okay, okay… Sorry, I can't help myself sometimes. Anyway, I suppose you could call me a 'watcher'… But I think we both know that would be a lie, because most people like that aren't into meddling… Or rather, they are, but they'll deny it even when caught, while I won't even bother lying. I'll tell you this, though: as far as I know, I'm the only thing like me there is. I'm not a God, and I'm not a demon, but something else entirely, a unique existence… So far as I know, anyway. It's a big multiverse, I suppose there might be others out there somewhere, but I've never run into them."

"And why, may I ask, did you set Cosmo on the path to freeing me?" Blaze asked, not lowering her fireball. "I rather doubt you did it out of the goodness of your heart. Creatures like you really do."

Sagara gave her an affronted look. "What makes you say that? How do you know I'm not an omni-benevolent cosmic do-gooder, traveling the cosmos and spreading love and happiness everywhere I go?" Blaze raised a skeptical eyebrow. After a moment, the snake burst into laughter. "Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't believe me either."

"Then why did you manipulate me into freeing Blaze? What stake do you have in what's happening here? How do you benefit from her fighting my father?" Cosmo demanded.

"How do I benefit? Simple, I don't," Sagara said, surprising them.

"What do you mean?" Blaze asked.

"I mean that what happens on this world has no bearing on me whatsoever. I do not stand to profit one way or the other, no matter who wins this little conflict. If you win, fine. If Dark Oak wins, that's also fine. It won't affect me in the slightest," Sagara said.

Cosmo's brow furrowed in confusion. "But… Then why?"

The snake shrugged. "I was curious."

Everyone stared at him in disbelief. "… What?" Blaze asked, dumbfounded.

Sagara chuckled. "I'm an almighty immortal being beyond your comprehension. Is it so hard to believe that I might set things into motion just because I want to see what happens?"

"Just to… Are you serious?!" Damil snapped. "What do you think this is, a game?! Lives are on the line! People are suffering and dying as we speak!"

"Of course they are. People are suffering and dying as we speak everywhere. People would suffer and die even if you weren't in the middle of a great battle between good and evil, backspace. People suffering and dying is universal," Sagara said with a carefree shrug. "And of course it's a game. All of life is, it's just that sometimes the stakes are higher than they are at others."

"I suppose you think yourself above good and evil, then?" Blaze snarled.

Sagara shrugged again. "I dunno. I've never really thought of myself as evil, though I'm sure there are many who would say I was given what I do on a regular basis. On the other hand, there are also plenty of people who are genuinely happy – if not a little wary – to see me whenever I stop by. I'm sure the same could be said of you, Blaze, depending on how this all turns out. After all, aren't good and evil ultimately a matter of perspective?

"Anyway, I didn't come here to debate morality or philosophy. I just wanted to stop by to check in, introduce myself, let you know I'd be watching, that sort of thing. You're probably not going to see me again for a long while, but trust me, I'll be seeing you."

The snake started to turn away, but Blaze asked, "If I were to turn this fireball into a sphere of Destruction, like the one I used on Red Pine, and through it at you, what would happen?"

Sagara considered this for a moment. "I'm not actually sure, to be honest. I'm fairly certain nothing will happen, since even if you were somehow able to destroy this body, well… Let's just say this isn't really me, or at least, not ALL of me. Might be interesting to find out, though. Want to try it?"

There was no malice or threat, overt or implied, in the statement. Only pure curiosity. The same curiosity, Blaze realized, that would lead to someone releasing a powerful world-ending demon to fight an evil overlord just to see what would happen. _Be very careful_ , she thought to herself. _Curiosity killed the cat, after all_. "I'd rather not," she said, dissipating the fireball.

Sagara shrugged. "Okay. Maybe another time, then." He started to turn away again, only to pause once more. "Oh yeah, one other thing… You might want to keep an eye on that kid there. A small fraction of your power entered that kitten when she received that mark on her cheek. It won't hurt her any, but… Well, I'm sure I don't need to tell you how important it is to make sure a potential future destroyer of worlds learns to use her power responsibly, right?"

Startled, Blaze looked down at Honey, who reached up to touch the mark on her cheek in surprise. Blaze concentrated on the kitten in her arm, and sure enough, realized she could sense something from her… An echo, a power like her own, but weaker, though with the potential to become far greater. "I… Shall see what I can do. Thank you," Blaze said.

"Happy to help," Sagara said cheerfully. "Until next time."

Folding his arms behind his back, he slithered out of the square. Nobody made a move until they were sure he was gone. Blaze got the absolute certainty that, even though he had not visibly teleported, if she tried chasing after the snake, she would not find him.

…

"Well, that was creepy," Amy said with a shudder.

"Rouge, you seem very knowledgeable about mysterious supernatural beings. Any idea who this one is?" Espio asked the bat.

Rouge shook her head. "My mother might, but the name 'Sagara' doesn't ring a bell. About the only thing I'm certain of is that he _isn't_ Nyarlathotep."

"How can you be sure?" Mighty asked.

"Because it's not one of his thousand names," Rouge said.

"Couldn't he have gotten another one?" Charmy asked.

Rouge shook her head. "It doesn't work that way."

"Why not? He can't just go to the cosmic equivalent of a back alley and pay some guy to forge him a passport or give him some plastic surgery or something?" Vector asked. He paused, then added, "Not like I'd have experience with that or anything."

"Nyarlathotep is a master manipulator, deceiver, and trickster… But he cannot assume a face or name outside of the thousand he possesses already. It's a limit on his power. It's not _much_ of a limit, granted, because 1000 is still a pretty big amount, but it's a limit all the same, and one that cannot be altered," Rouge explained.

"And because of that, he can't be Sagara," Shadow intuited.

Rouge nodded. "Correct. Doesn't mean there aren't countless other Eldritch beings who could be using that name, though."

"I did eventually learn who Sagara really was, but that wasn't until much later," Blaze explained.

"Did you have to fight him?" Shadow asked.

Blaze shook her head. "No. I'm not certain I _could_ have, to be honest… What he really was… Well, that will have to wait until later as well."

"What about Honey? Does she still have that piece of you inside of her?" Cream asked.

Blaze nodded. "Yes, and she's long since mastered it. She's not anywhere near as powerful as I am, but she's still strong enough to hold down the fort on her own whenever I'm not around, or even go off to have her own adventures when the need arises."

"She grew up to be very beautiful, too," Tails said. "Though I still think Cosmo's prettier, but, you know, that's just me. Er, no offence, Blaze."

"None taken," the cat said.

"Any chance we could meet her someday?" Vector asked.

"Perhaps if you came to visit someday," Blaze said. "I wouldn't mind showing you around my kingdom. After all, you've been gracious enough to show me your world plenty of times, it's only fair I return the favor."

"Does that invitation extend to me too?" Amy asked hesitantly.

"… That depends on how well you can control your tongue in my world," Blaze said after a moment. "My people are very devoted to me, and my daughter even more so, and take any perceived slight to me very seriously."

Amy gulped. "… I'll take that under advisement."

…

"Well, that was fairly disturbing," Cosmo said finally, once they were sure the serpent was really gone.

"Miss Blaze, is what he said about the girl true?" Damil asked the cat.

Blaze nodded. "Yes, I can sense it inside her… A piece of myself, very small, but it has the potential to grow."

"Does… Does that mean I might become like you, Miss Blaze?" Honey asked hopefully.

"Well, not _just_ like me, but with some proper training, I think we might be able to make something out of you," Blaze said, a surprisingly warm smile finding its way onto her face.

"Are you sure we should? Can't you remove it from her?" Cosmo asked.

Blaze shook her head. "I don't believe there's any way I could without hurting her. She'll have to come with us, so I can keep an eye on her and make sure her power manifests properly."

"But… Surely you're not suggesting we take her with us on our quest! It's far too dangerous for a little girl!" Damil protested.

"And where would you suggest we leave her?" Blaze replied. "Nowhere is safe in this kingdom so long as Dark Oak lives. The safest place for her is with us… Especially because I am the only one who can make sure that she doesn't hurt herself or anyone else with her burgeoning new powers. She already had it bad enough growing up as half-Sphinx, can you imagine how difficult it will be for her to be part-demon too without someone to show her the way?"

"I don't want to leave you!" Honey cried, alarmed.

"You won't, I promise," Blaze assured the kitten, who hugged her in relief. A strange fluttering feeling rose in her chest, and she found herself blinking a few times, her eyes suddenly misty.

"I don't really like it either, but I'm not sure there's a better option," Cosmo said to Damil. "It's not like there are exactly many safe places we can leave her right now."

Damil sighed reluctantly. "Well, I suppose if we must-" He gasped in pain, staggering and nearly collapsing on Cosmo.

The Princess gasped. "Damil!"

"Red Pine wounded him pretty badly. What can we do?" Blaze asked in concern.

"We need to find some fresh soil and clean water to plant him in," Cosmo said, looking at her bodyguard, who seemed to have trouble breathing, in alarm. "It'll take a lot slower to heal than it would if we had sunlight, but it'll have to do."

Blaze blinked. "Plant him – right, you're plant people, I forgot. Where can we find some?"

"We'll have to leave the village. I don't think there's exactly going to be the kind of soil we need with all these Helheim plants growing around," Cosmo said, grimacing at some of the alien plants still growing on the buildings that had somehow managed to escape being burned away.

Blaze nodded. "Right, and after that, we need to plan our next move. It won't be long before Dark Oak finds out I killed one of his strongest warriors, and I doubt he'll be too happy about it. Where is the closest Sol Emerald?"

"In the Feywoods. They're several dozen miles to the southeast of here," Cosmo reported. "However, I'm not entirely certain how helpful the locals will be. While the Forest Fairies are relatively friendly and always happy to assist travelers, the Elves… Well…"

Blaze grimaced. "Elves. Of course. How bad are we talking, here?"

"Depends. The Wood Elves will sometimes help but be condescending about it, and other times will just shoot you," Cosmo said. "And the High Elves… Well, let's just say we don't want to run into the High Elves. They're the kind of people who would agree with Sagara that life is a game, and you aren't winning if there isn't a lot of bloodshed and screaming involved." She shrugged. "Still, at least they aren't as bad as the Drow, or Dark Elves… Who live underground… Which is where I believe one of the Emeralds is being kept…" She made a face. "And of course that's not even beginning to get into the Inves or other minions of my father that'll probably be everywhere around the fortress where the Emerald is…"

"We'll deal with it," Blaze said resolutely. "However, before we leave, there's one last important thing I need to do."

Cosmo blinked. "What?"

Blaze opened a hand, a fireball materializing in it.

Sometime later…

Blaze, Honey, and Cosmo watched the village burn from atop a hill on the outskirts of town. The screaming had ended a while ago, and now the only sound was the roaring of flames and the crackle of collapsing wood and buildings. "Was this truly necessary?" Cosmo asked softly.

"Aside from the fact that it gives a merciful end to whatever townsfolks still lived in torment, it sends a message to Dark Oak," Blaze said, not taking her eyes off the inferno. "It lets him know that a new power has risen, one that is not afraid of him, one which will burn him and all his ilk from the face of the world."

Cosmo nodded quietly. "I should go check on Damil," she said, turning to head back to where they had planted the knight. "Oh… And Blaze?"

"Yes, Cosmo?" The cat asked.

"While you're not the hero I was expecting, I think you're the one we needed," the Princess said, nodding before heading off into the dark, away from the fire.

Blaze glanced at Honey, who stared at the flames consuming her former home, the fire reflected in her eyes. "No tears?" She asked.

Honey shook her head. "I've already cried for the people who deserved it."

Blaze nodded in understanding, and said no more. After a moment, the kitten said, "While I hated most of them, there were still some people who were nice to me. People I loved. People who didn't deserve this." She glanced at Blaze. "Did you have anyone like that, growing up?"

Blaze began to open her mouth to say that no, of course she hadn't… And surprised herself by saying, "My parents, before they died. And there was… There was one other…" Her brow furrowed in puzzlement. There had been someone, she was certain of it, she just… Couldn't remember anything about him or her. No face, no name, no voice, no nothing. Just that she'd had a friend, and that friend wasn't around anymore.

"I didn't know demons could have parents, or friends," Honey said, intrigued. "Then again, lots of people say sphinxes were horrible monsters who didn't love anyone but themselves, but I'm part-Sphinx, and I'm fairly certain that's not true, since I loved other people, even if there weren't that many. Though I suppose it could be the part of me that's _not_ Sphinx, but…"

"People say lots of things. That doesn't always make them true," Blaze said, recalling the cruel people who had banished her out of fear of what she might do, not what she had actually done.

Honey nodded in understanding. After a moment, she said, "I'm not sorry they're dead. But… I'm not happy, either. Does that make any sense?"

"I think so," Blaze said. "The fools who banished me have been dead for eons now, but I'm not particularly gratified by their deaths. Possibly because I had nothing to do with it. Or maybe because, ultimately, they just don't matter. I'm here, and they aren't. That's what counts, I think."

Honey nodded. After a moment, Blaze asked, "Do you want to watch a little longer?"

Honey shook her head. "No. I've seen enough."

Blaze nodded. "All right then. Let's go."

The two cats turned away from the fire and walked off into an uncertain future, hand-in-hand.

…

"And that, I think, is that, for now," Blaze finished.

"What?! That's it?!" Amy spluttered.

"You can't stop there! You haven't told the whole story!" Cried the aghast Silver. "I need to know everything for my r—I mean, to stop Eggman Nega!"

"There are so many questions you haven't answered yet! Like what the deal with the flame was or the answers to the holes in your memory and your mysterious past, or who the heck that Sagara guy really was, or all the other tantalizing stuff you've alluded to!" Mighty protested.

"Like the vizier, who I'm still not entirely certain wasn't Jafar," Charmy added.

Espio facepalmed. "Charmy…"

"What? I have to be sure!" The bee insisted.

"And you haven't told us how you got the Sol Emeralds, or defeated Dark Oak, or became ruler of Solana given that Cosmo was next in line!" Vector agreed.

"I want to know how you dealt with the issue of Helheim. It could prove useful knowledge for us in the future," Rouge added.

"I-WANT-TO-HEAR-ABOUT-MORE-OF-YOUR-BATTLES. THEY-WERE-AWESOME," Omega said.

"Yes. I especially liked the part where you hit that one guy a lot," Knuckles agreed.

"And I want to know more about Honey," Shadow said softly. "I know what it's like to grow up feeling like you're a monster…"

"Please don't stop, Blaze! We have to know the story ends!" Cream pleaded.

Blaze chuckled and ruffled the rabbit's head. "Calm down, everyone. I didn't say I was stopping the story, I just need a short break to catch my breath and rest my voice. That took a lot out of me, and took much longer to tell than I expected."

"Yeah, you have been at it a while, haven't you?" Knuckles realized.

"Feels like months, really," Tails agreed.

"Give me a little while to rest up and prepare myself, and I'll tell you the rest of the story," Blaze promised.

"And in the meantime, one of the others can tell their stories," Suggested Sonic. "Like an Interlude, or Intermission. That should be okay, right, Silver?"

The white hedgehog hemmed and hawed uncertainly. "Well… I… _Guess_ it'd be okay…"

Sonic slapped his hands together. "Great! Blaze, take a seat and relax, I'll get you something to drink, you're probably pretty thirsty after all that storytelling."

"Thank you, beloved, that is much appreciated," Blaze said as she sat on one of the picnic benches, petting her Biter. "A chili dog would not be remiss, either."

"On it!" Sonic said cheerfully as he headed for the refreshments table.

"So, who's left?" Mighty asked.

"Well, I think there's Cream, and… Big," Rouge said. "And… That's it, really. Huh. I thought there'd be more, somehow."

They glanced at Big, who was still fishing at the punch bowl, completely oblivious to everyone and everything that had been happening around him for the last few hours. A rather alarmingly large pile of fish skeletons was lying on the ground next to them.

"Right!" Shadow declared. "Cream it is!"

"Me?" Cream squeaked.

"Chao?" Cheese echoed.

"Well, it's sure to be more interesting that anything the fat guy's got to say," Charmy said bluntly.

"Charmy! That's not nice!" Cream scolded.

"S-sorry, Cream," Charmy apologized quickly, not wanting to get in the rabbit's bad books. Granted, he wasn't sure the kind and loving bunny had any, but he certainly didn't want to be the first!

"Well, if everyone wants to hear my story, I suppose I can oblige," Cream said.

"It'll also probably be a nice palate cleanser after some of the darker things we just heard," Espio agreed.

"Okay then!" Cream said, clapping her hands together. "Mr. Silver, ask away! What you want to know?"

"Nothing much," Silver said. "All I want to know is… **Cream, how did you get Cheese the Chao?"**

…

And that's a wrap!

Wow. I know I say this all the time, but I REALLY did not expect this chapter to be as long or take as long as it did. If it was too much for most of you readers, I apologize, and tentatively promise that future chapters shouldn't be as long as this. I hope.

Anyway, yes, it looks like we are splitting Blaze's chapter in two. I kind of have to, really, if I were to write up the whole thing in one chapter not only would the time between updates be even LONGER, but this thing would be a ridiculously long chapter (more so than it already is), and I'm trying not to let this turn into another Brave New World. Some of the later chapters just got ridiculous…

Anyway, next chapter we deal into Cream's origin, and don't let Silver's question fool you, we're going to learn a lot more than just how she got Cheese. After that, we'll resume Blaze's origin. Voting for the origin after that will come at the end of next chapter.

Sorry for the wait, and I hope you can wait a bit longer for the whole story! Cream's shouldn't take NEARLY this long…I hope…

Oh, and if any of you can recognize what Blaze's origin is crossing over with, I'll be very delighted.


	9. Cream's Fairytale

Bet you didn't expect a new chapter from me so soon, did you? Well, neither did I, so I guess we're both surprised.

Anyway, this one should be a short and sweet one, albeit one with a surprisingly large twist. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.

…

"How I got Cheese?" Cream glanced at her pet and faithful companion, who squealed happily and clapped his appendages. "Why, I'd be happy to tell that story!"

"This should be cute," Rouge commented.

"And definitely less dark or grim than the last story!" Knuckles said hopefully. Everyone groaned. "What?"

"Knux, I think you just jinxed it," Sonic said.

"Yeah, way to go, Knucklehead!" Charmy sneered.

"O-oops," Knuckles said in embarrassment.

"Actually, he's right, there's nothing particularly dark or grim or even sad about this story," Cream interjected.

"Oh! In that case, sorry, Knuckles," Sonic apologized.

"You're still a Knucklehead, though," Charmy said.

"Well, yes, that was never in dispute," Sonic said. Knuckles groaned.

"So, just to be clear, this is going to be a light, sweet, fluffy story with nothing bad happening to anyone whatsoever?" Amy asked cautiously.

"Pretty much, yeah," Cream said.

"Wonderful! We desperately need something like that after that last one," Amy said, glaring at Blaze, who was drinking some soda while petting her Biter.

"It's not my fault my past is what it is," Blaze grunted.

"I hear that," Shadow agreed.

"I suppose it would be refreshing to hear something cute and innocent before we delve into the next bit of Blaze's story," Espio said.

"Like a breather episode on TV!" Vector agreed.

"SOUNDS-BORING. CAN'T-I-GO-SOMEWHERE-ELSE-UNTIL-THE-FUN-STUFF-STARTS-AGAIN?" Omega complained.

"No," Tails said. The robot groaned.

"Anyway, it all started a couple of years ago, when Mommy and I were having breakfast…" Cream began.

…

On a bright and sunny morning, Cream and her mother Vanilla, a very beautiful adult rabbit with cream and orange fur, a lavender dress, crimson vest and shoes, and an orange ascot were having breakfast in the incredibly opulent breakfast room of their expansive mansion. The floor was made of alternating tiles of marble and teak parquet inlaid with glittering chips of gold and turquoise covered in an exquisite carpet of Babylonian weave with a thread count higher than most people could count to in their heads in colors so vibrant it was incredible to think that it was actually thousands of years old. The walls were painted a soft, welcoming cream and salmon with a great number of masterpiece paintings and tapestries depicting rabbits resembling the chief residents of the manor in exquisite dress performing heroic and incredible feats hanging everywhere, interspaced with alcoves containing busts of numerous very handsome and exquisitely beautiful lapines resembling the ones in the tapestries and paintings. Great marble columns rose to a towering ceiling far overhead, which was covered in a mural depicting a wedding between the scions of two powerful and ancient rabbit clans, the two lovers staring at each other with far more affection than the rest of their families, who didn't look quite so happy to be there. (Or maybe they were just uncomfortable having to wear those extravagant but less than practical period outfits. One had to make many sacrifices to look fashionable.) A massive chandelier made of actual diamonds instead of much cheaper crystal or glass dangled from the ceiling beside a stuffed alligator, the light from the floor to ceiling windows covering one wall which stared out at the acres and acres of flower and statue gardens, hedge mazes, guesthouses, stables, lakes, and forests which made up their sprawling estate refracting from the many facets of the light fixture and reflecting off of dozens of cleverly placed mirrors to bathe the breakfast room in constant radiance that somehow did not hurt the eyes.

The centerpiece of the room was a table long enough to house the entire population of a small village, covered in a tablecloth of white silk inlaid with actual pearls. While comedic tropes would have Cream and Vanilla, the only two eating at the table, sitting on opposite ends and being forced to shout at the top of their lungs to be heard, instead they were sitting right next to each other; Vanilla seated at the table's head in a chair more like a throne, with Cream sitting on her right in a slightly less fancy chair which could also be conceived of as a throne, though one not quite as nice. Vanilla had already finished her breakfast and was reading the paper, muttering to herself under her breath with a vague displeasure and making notes into a PDA, while Cream was still eating. Once she'd finished, she carefully laid down her golden silverware on her golden plate, wiped her mouth, and said-

…

"Okay, okay, hold on a sec," Mighty interjected. "There's… There's no way you're _that_ rich… Is there?"

"I… Kind of am, actually," Cream said uncomfortably. "I don't know how rich, precisely, certainly not as wealthy as Rouge or probably Blaze, but… We're pretty far up there. We are at least richer then Tails, I know that much."

"… Holy shit," the armadillo said.

"Vector, I think Vanilla just got even further out of your league," Espio commented, causing the crocodile to grimace.

"Ha ha!" Charmy laughed, pointing at Vector.

"Charmy, you realize that if Vanilla's out of my league, Cream's out of yours?" Vector growled vindictively.

"… Oh," the bee whimpered, antenna drooping.

"That is an incredibly excessive display of wealth and opulence," Rouge remarked. She smiled. "I approve wholeheartedly! Granted, it's not anywhere NEAR as impressive as back home, but still, not bad for a mortal."

"Holy crap… And that's your _actual_ house, and the place we've visited before is just your summer house?!" Asked an amazed Sonic.

"Actually, no, the place you visited before was my summer house, and this is my _vacation_ house," Cream corrected. "My real house is much bigger."

"How much bigger?" Shadow asked.

"You've heard, I'm sure, of estates large enough that they have their own ZIP Codes?" Cream asked.

"Of course," Espio said.

"Well, my real house is large enough that each WING has its own ZIP Code," Cream confessed.

"… _Jesus_ ," Sonic whistled.

"Mine's still bigger!" Rouge said cheerfully.

"So is mine, but I'm not bragging," Blaze grumbled.

"Isn't a place that big awfully big for just the two of you?" Asked the dumbfounded Knuckles, having trouble wrapping his mind around this.

"Oh no, it's not just the two of us," Cream corrected. "Cheese is there too! And Chocola! Oh, and Gemerl, too!"

"Chao, Chao!" Cheese chirped.

"Err, the five of you, then-" Knuckles started.

"As well as a rather sizable staff of servants, and numerous members of our family-of which my mother is the head of and is very large—either passing through or in permanent residence," Cream added.

"Oh. That makes more sense," Knuckles said.

"Yeah, considering that they're rabbits, it makes sense that she'd have a very large family," Mighty said.

"Why?" Cream asked innocently.

Mighty froze. "Err…"

"Also, is that racist? I'm not sure if that's racist or not," Vector said.

"Is it racist if it's true?" Charmy asked.

"It can be," Espio said.

"How come you never let us over to your real house?!" Amy demanded. "Or at least your vacation house?!"

"Because while Mommy respects you and thinks you're all very nice people, and is glad that you're all such good friends to me, given how often and easily things are broken and utterly destroyed around you, she'd rather not have you anywhere near something as valuable, expensive, and irreplaceable as most of the things we have," Cream said apologetically. "Plus, she's afraid Rouge would try to steal everything in sight."

"That's a fair point," Shadow admitted.

"The woman knows me well," Rouge said proudly.

"But how… How the heck are you able to afford all that stuff?!" Vector demanded, stunned by just how big the divide between him and the object of his affections really was.

"Old money, I think?" Cream said uncertainly. "We come from a very, very, very long line of incredibly wealthy rabbits dating back over a thousand years, though I'll admit it's probably not as impressive as Miss Rouge's lineage. Also, instead of simply living off our accumulated wealth, Mommy works in the 'family business,' which she inherited from grandpa and she promises she'll pass down to me when I'm old enough."

"I approve," Rouge said.

"What's the 'family business?'" Tails asked.

"I'm not really sure, actually," Cream admitted. "Mommy says it's big and complicated and she'll explain it when I'm older. She seems to be involved in a lot of things, though, given what I've overheard from her phone calls and business meetings."

"Like what?" Blaze asked.

"Tennis," Cream said.

They exchanged confused looks. "Tennis?" Shadow asked.

Cream nodded. "Yes, I've heard her talk about protecting rackets, so I can't think of any possible alternative." As the others exchanged uncertain looks, she continued to say, "Also, orthopedic footwear."

"Footwear?" Asked a baffled Knuckles.

Cream nodded. "Yes, though I'm not sure what sort of foot problem would require shoes made of cement. They sound very heavy and hard to walk in. Though I seem to call Mr. Sonic once saying that Eggman once swapped his shoes for incredibly slow and heavy ones then trapped him in a labyrinth and he had to find the Chaos Emeralds to get them off, so maybe it's like that, but not evil?"

"Um…" Vector said uncomfortably, getting a slow realization.

"I think she's also into aquariums, because she's mentioned sleeping with fishes," Cream continued. "Oh, and laundry, which she apparently pours a lot of money into. And I don't know how you can profit from traffic, but she apparently does, so there must be some way to do so. Oh, and medicine, because she mentions drugs on the phone from time to time. She must do something with beds too, because I hear she's always 'going to the mattresses.' That or she takes lots of naps. She also likes horse races a lot, though I'm not entirely sure how one can 'fix' those, so I guess she employs lots of horse doctors?" She frowned and scratched her head as more and more of the others gawked at her incredulously. "Also, for some reason, when people come over, a lot of the time they call her 'Donna,' which is odd, because her name is Vanilla."

There was a momentary silence. The others exchanged stunned looks. There was no way Cream could be _this_ naïve, or that her mother could be what she was implying she was… Could she?

"SUDDENLY, I-AM-A-LOT-MORE-INTERESTED," Omega said.

"Wait, wait, wait," Charmy said, incredulous. "Cream, are you saying that your mother is a-"

"A KIND AND WONDERFUL WOMAN WHO HAS DONE NO WRONG!" Vector screamed frantically, clamping the bee's mouth shut.

"Um, Cream, honey? Do you think you could give us a moment to talk about something completely unrelated to your mother in private?" Amy asked nervously.

Cream narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Wait a minute, are you about to talk about something you don't think I'm old or mature enough to understand?"

"Err…" Amy said nervously, tucking at her collar.

Blaze quickly manifested a fireball, and then blew on it, causing it to cool off and Harden into a molten lump. "Cream, how would you like to play fetch with my little friend here?" The Biter looked up excitedly, barking and panting when he saw the ball.

Cream's eyes narrowed further. "Okay, now I KNOW you're trying to get me out of the way to talk about something private…" Her expression brightened. "Fortunately, I _love_ playing with animals, so I'll go along with it. Give me the ball!"

Blaze tossed Cream the ball. The rabbit fumbled with it, surprised by how warm it was despite wearing gloves, and then ran off with it, giggling as Cheese and the happy Biter chased after her. Everyone watched her run off and start playing fetch with the slavering lava monster, and then, once they were sure she was out of earshot, Espio spoke up. "Okay, so, am I correct in assuming that all of us believe Cream's mother is actually some sort of crime boss?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Sonic said.

"I had gathered as much myself," Blaze agreed.

"Wait, she is?!" Knuckles asked in disbelief.

There was a pause, and then everyone stared at him incredulously. "… Knuckles, what did you THINK we were talking about?" Mighty asked.

The echidna shrugged. "Heck if I know. I barely have any idea what's going on most of the time anyway." Everyone groaned. "What makes you all so sure she's a crime boss?"

"Because most of the activities Cream described are, when you remove the filtering provided by an innocent little girl who has no idea what she's listening to and may willfully be deceiving herself as to the true nature of her mother, are all things generally performed by the leader of an organized crime syndicate," Shadow explained.

"Oh," Knuckles said. "Are you sure that this all isn't just some misunderstanding and it turns out that everything Cream overheard was actually completely innocent and innocuous and we're all making a big deal over nothing? That happens on TV all the time."

"This isn't television," Espio pointed out. "This is real life."

"While it's POSSIBLE that we are making a mistake, it's rather unlikely," Rouge explained.

"Especially because the agency has suspected for some time that Cream's mother might have some connection to the infamous Cottontail crime family, a syndicate which has had a finger in organized crime all over the world for hundreds of years," Shadow added.

"What?! Why didn't you tell us sooner?!" Charmy demanded.

"Because it was speculation, rather than fact," Shadow said. "They're very good at covering their tracks. Plus, it wasn't really any of your business."

"Cream is our friend, and Vanilla is her mother and also a friend! How is that not our business?!" Amy demanded.

"We are your friends, and a lot of the things we do are DEFINITELY not your business," Shadow said bluntly.

"Rouge, wouldn't you know for sure? I mean, aside from the fact that you're a super-spy, you've got pretty close ties to organized crime, and then there's the whole vampire thing…" Tails asked.

"Well, naturally we've had dealings with the Cottontails, but they've been dealing with us for long enough to know how to keep us from knowing a lot of the things they don't want us to, including who their leader is," Rouge explained. "Even we don't know everything, just… Well, almost everything. It being Vanilla WOULD make some sense given a few other things we suspect, though…"

"NO!" Vector shouted. "I refuse to believe it! There's no way my dear sweet Vanilla could possibly be a vicious crime boss! It's just not possible!"

"Well, look at it this way, Vector," Charmy pointed out. "If the two of you hook up, not only will you be super-loaded, all of the loan sharks will definitely back off!"

"Well, that would be pretty nice – I mean, NO! Even if it were true, which it isn't, there's no way I'd go for it!" Vector insisted. "I became a detective to FIGHT evil, not marry into it!"

"Are we really sure that Vanilla IS evil, though?" Amy asked. "I mean, even if she IS a crime boss – not saying she is, just throwing it out there – I mean, she's so nice! Even if… You know, she didn't want us anywhere near her REAL house…"

"She always does make the best cookies…" Tails recalled fondly.

"And she let me spend the night when I had nowhere else to stay on my first visit in this world," Blaze remembered with a smile.

"And she was nice enough to sponsor me for that rehab program," Charmy remembered. Everybody looked at him. "What? I told you, we live in a bad neighborhood!"

"It's perfectly possible for Vanilla to be a loving, caring mother and friend, while at the same time being a vicious crime boss," Rouge pointed out. "I mean, my mom is the most wonderful woman I can think of, but also a cunning dictator who rules the world in secret, and Blaze is the woman Sonic loves and a loving mother, as well as a part-demon destroyer of worlds bent on conquering her planet. I've saved the world a bunch of times, but I'm also a spy, a thief, a vampire, and future ruler of the world who was already very accomplished at playing multiple sides. Shadow has almost destroyed the world nearly as many times as he's saved it, has a complicated past, and is the leader of a race of aliens who tried to invade us more than once. People are complicated. We can't all be one-dimensional heroes or villains, after all."

"Yeah, yeah, I know…" Sonic grumbled. "You keep reminding me…"

"If only there was a way for us to know for sure…" Tails murmured.

"We're detectives. We could investigate," Espio suggested.

"And prove that Vanilla is completely innocent and not a mob boss!" Vector yelled.

"There are a number of lines we could pursue in inquiry, both mundane, clandestine, and more… Supernatural," Rouge said with a nod.

"Or we could just ask Silver, because he's from the future and might know," Knuckles suggested.

Everyone glanced at the time traveler, who'd been standing aside watching while they debated. "Don't be silly, Knuckles, there's no way Silver would ever tell us something like-" Amy started.

"Yep, Cream's mom is totally Donna Cottontail, head of the Cottontail crime family and one of the wealthiest and most powerful criminals in the entire world," Silver interrupted.

Everyone stared him. "… Oh, so NOW you feel like telling us something important?!" Amy yelled, throwing up her hands in exasperation.

"It's part of the past, not the FYOO-CHUR, so I have no reason not to tell you," Silver said.

"Then why didn't you mention it before now?!" Sonic demanded.

Silver shrugged. "You didn't ask. Plus, I enjoyed watching you guys argue about it." Sonic facepalmed.

"Huh. So now we know," Tails said.

"Kind of anti-climactic," Mighty remarked.

"I can't believe it… My best friend is the daughter of a crime boss… I feel so… So…" Amy paused for a moment, and then frowned. "… Underwhelmed and unsurprised, actually, given some of the other stuff I've learned today."

"Yeah, being a vampire Princess or a destroyer of worlds is hard to beat," Sonic agreed.

"At least nobody's talking about how horrible my species was anymore," Knuckles said happily.

"I-WONDER-HOW-MANY-PEOPLE-VANILLA-HAS-HAD-KILLED?" Omega wondered.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! She can't be a crime boss! She can't be! Please, say it ain't so! SAY IT AIN'T SO!" Vector wailed, shaking Silver frantically.

The time traveler telekinetically shoved the crocodile off of him. "It's so." Vector burst into tears.

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell us whether or not Cream inherits the position from her mom?" Shadow asked.

"Or whether or not she marries me?" Charmy asked nervously. Everyone looked at him. "What? Her being a crime boss isn't necessarily a deal breaker!"

"Could she even inherit the position from her mother? I mean, isn't she already the immortal Empress of all Chao?" Mighty wondered.

"I don't see why not. The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive," Tails reasoned.

"No, I'm not telling you," Silver said. "Because it involves your FYOO-CHUR, not your past."

"Oh well, worth a try," Charmy said with a shrug.

"VANILLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Vector wailed.

"It could be worse," Espio said, trying to comfort his friend. "She could be Mr. Carruthers."

Mighty shuddered. "Please don't bring that name up again. Whatever happened to him, anyway?"

"Oh, he died," Charmy said.

"Phew," the armadillo said, relieved.

Vector paused in his sobbing to consider this. "… You make a good point. Compared to him, crime boss really isn't all that bad," he admitted. "And hey, maybe I could convince her to turn the business around! Power of love and all that!"

"That didn't work so well for Michael Corleone, as I recall," Shadow said.

"Is the Godfather trilogy really the best source of information for something like this?" Tails asked.

Shadow shrugged. "Can't hurt. They were good movies, after all, except for the third one." Pretty much everyone nodded in agreement.

"So… Where we go from here?" Blaze wondered.

"Well, if I can convince the agency to look more carefully at Vanilla and her suspected connections to Cottontail, maybe press known associates and contacts for information-" Rouge started.

"No, I meant with Cream. What do we tell her?" Blaze explained.

They considered this for a moment, then all turned to look at Cream, who was laughing happily and rolling around in the grass with Cheese and the Biter, though the latter had the unfortunate tendency to reduce everything he touched to smoldering ashes. "She said she wasn't happy with us always treating her like a little kid and hiding things from her for 'her own good,'" Rouge said uncomfortably.

"And she DOES have to grow up some day…" Vector agreed uneasily.

"On the other hand, do you think she's really ready to hear that her mother is one of the most notorious criminal kingpins in the world?" Amy argued.

"Is anyone EVER ready to learn something like that? I can't imagine her being older will make it any easier to hear," Espio pointed out.

"Plus, if she found out that we all knew but didn't tell her, I can't imagine she'd be happy," Tails agreed.

They stood in uncomfortable silence for moment, watching as Cream braided flower crowns for herself, Cheese, and the Biter, not particularly caring that the demon's crown burst into flames the instant she put it on it, since this just gave her an excuse to make another one.

"Oh hell, I can't do it," Sonic said finally.

"Neither can I," Blaze said with a sigh.

"I don't have the stomach," Shadow admitted.

"Same here," Rouge said unhappily.

"We can't keep it from her forever," Espio said.

"Nope, but that doesn't mean we have to tell her now," Vector pointed out.

"YOU-ARE-ALL-BEING-SISSIES," Omega said derisively. "I'LL-DO-IT-IF-NONE-OF-YOU-HAVE-THE-BALLS-FOR-IT."

"No, you will not!" Amy snapped.

"OH, FINE," Omega grumbled.

"Cream, honey, we're done!" Rouge shouted to the rabbit.

Cream stopped in her frolicking and rushed back over with Cheese and the Biter. "I don't suppose you're going to tell me what that was all about?"

"Not just yet," Amy said apologetically.

Cream sighed. "Figures. Well, at least I had a nice time. Thank you for letting me play with your pet, Blaze!"

Blaze chuckled and rubbed the chin of the demon, causing it to whimper happily. "Not a problem. It reminds me of how Honey used to play with my minions when she was much younger and learning how to master her powers…" She sighed wistfully. "She doesn't do that very often anymore, sad to say… Well, every child has to grow up eventually."

"Do you think you could continue the story, please?" Tails asked.

"Yeah, we're sorry for interrupting," Sonic apologized.

"It's not a problem," Cream said with an easy-going, forgiving smile, making them feel all the worse about what they were hiding from her. "Anyway, I asked my mother…"

…

"Mommy, can I ask you for something?" Cream spoke up.

Vanilla lowered her newspaper and looked at her daughter with curiosity. She had raised Cream to be a very kind, polite, and considerate girl, who was far from spoiled despite being showered with constant affection from her large extended family and receiving just about any gift or treasure her precious little heart could desire. As such, Vanilla knew that there was a nonzero chance of her getting Cream whatever it was she asked for, but felt she should ask anyway just to be safe. "That depends, poppet. What would you like?"

"Can I have a pet?" Cream asked.

Vanilla considered this for a moment. This did not seem like an unreasonable request. Cream was and incredibly loving and compassionate child with a sense of responsibility far more developed than most little girls her age had, and so her mother knew without a doubt that any animal Cream chose to take care of would be lavished with more love and affection then it knew how to deal with, and certainly wouldn't be ignored and left to the parents to take care of. "I don't see why not. What sort of pet were you thinking of? Would you like to go to the store to look for one?" In the back of her mind she was already running down a list of suppliers who owed her, animals which would not only make a good companion but loyal protectors for their owner, and less-than-legal places where such a pet could be… _Enhanced_ to make it truly worthy of the girl who would inherit the family business.

"Most stores don't have what I'm thinking of. I was considering maybe… A Chao?" Cream asked hopefully.

Vanilla thought about this for a moment. A Chao. Yes, that might work. They responded to and changed shape based on the heart of their owner and grew stronger based on what they ate and how they were trained, and she could easily procure everything needed to ensure this Chao would be more than strong enough to protect her daughter. They also were like Phoenixes in that they reincarnated after death and, if cared for properly, had a chance of evolving into an immortal and indestructible being, making it the perfect life long companion and Guardian for her daughter, for Vanilla had no doubt in her mind that Cream would have no trouble raising her Chao to its ultimate form. "I think that sounds reasonable. Let me see…" She checked her PDA. "Yes, my next meeting isn't until this afternoon. How'd you like to go to the Chao Garden in half an hour to pick out an egg, and we can have lunch in town afterwards?"

Cream gasped in delight. "I'd love to!"

Vanilla folded her newspaper and rose from her seat. "All right, then. You get ready, I have a couple of things to take care of."

As Cream eagerly rushed out of the room to get ready, she heard her mother calling someone and saying, "Hello? This is the Donna, I'll be stopping by with my daughter very shortly and I expect nothing less than the finest selection of Chao eggs…"

…

Everyone cringed. "What?" Cream asked, worried.

"Nothing. Nothing. Keep going," Sonic said quickly.

…

A bit later…

The elevator door slid open, and Cream's eyes widened in wonder as she took in the sight of the Chao Garden spread out before her. It looked as if someone had somehow managed to transplant an idyllic slice of paradise to the entire floor of a major skyscraper. The floor was made up of lush green grass growing from genuine soil, winding cobblestone paths cutting their way around the room. Large palm trees growing big round fruits sprouted here and there along with bushes laden with colorful berries. Taking up a large corner was a rock formation and artificial mountain with waterfalls cascading down its surface into a large pool at its base. The walls and ceiling were covered in video panels depicting blue skies and fluffy white clouds to give the illusion that this was all outdoors.

But, most importantly of all, there were Chao! Chao of all shapes and colors, Chao snoozing on pillows or against each other, Chao eating from fruits and berries, Chao playing with toys or miniature animals or Chaos Drives, Chao frolicking and dancing and flying about on their tiny wings, Chao everywhere! "It's wonderful!" She cried ecstatically, eyes wide and brimming with delight.

Vanilla chuckled as she stepped up beside her daughter, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I'm glad you think so, Cream."

There was the sound of a propeller, and suddenly a small blue robot shaped like a Chao, with stubby limbs, a large onion-shaped head with a red two-bladed propeller attached on top with a grey wind-up key on the back, and a broad orange grin and big orange ripple-like eyes flew into view.

…

"Gah!" Knuckles yelped.

"What?" Cream asked, startled.

"Sorry, Omochao out of nowhere… It frightened me," Knuckles said apologetically.

Sonic nodded. "You aren't the only one, Knux… After Shade's story, I'm never going to be able to look at those creepy things the same way ever again."

They all shuddered. "You aren't the only one," Espio agreed.

"Before, I only hunted them down and took their heads when I was running low on ammo for my Omochao Gun," Shadow said. "Now, I think I'll just do it whenever I run into one of them."

"Won't that make whatever intelligence is controlling them angry?" Tails asked.

Shadow smirked. "I'm _counting_ on it."

Cream made a face. "Well, I was kind of surprised when I saw it too, though I didn't think there was anything sinister about it at the time… Now, though…"

…

As Cream hid behind her mother's skirts, startled by the sudden appearance of the robot, the mechanical Chao spoke up. "Hi, I'm Omochao! I'm sorry, but the Chao Garden is closed today. Some VIPs reserved the whole floor-"

"That would be us," Vanilla spoke up.

Omochao did a double take. "Huh? Oh! I'm so sorry, Donna Cottontail! I didn't realize that was you. Oh, and this must be your daughter! Please forgive me for not recognizing you, you look rather different when you're not… Um… Doing business. Speaking of which, thank you again for the very generous donation you made, I promise you the money will be spent wisely."

"I'm glad to hear that," Vanilla said calmly. "However, we aren't here for business, or at least not… _That_ sort of business. We are here to find my daughter a Chao. Do you have eggs meeting the specifications I gave you ready?"

"We do indeed! Right this way, please!" Omochao said, beckoning them down one of the cobble paths.

"Mommy, why do so many people call you Donna? That's not your name," said a perplexed Cream as they followed the robot through the garden, past many groups of happy Chao, all of whom stopped for a moment to look their way, curious as to the newcomers.

"It's not my name, it's my title," Vanilla explained. "Like president, or captain, or Queen. I am the Donna because I'm the head of the family business, and when you are old enough to take over, that shall be your title."

"Oh, I see," Cream said. "But… That means my name will still be Cream, right?"

"In private, yes. During business hours, you will be Donna Cottontail, just like I am," Vanilla explained.

Cream frowned. "I'm not sure I get it."

"Don't worry, you will when you're older," Vanilla assured her daughter.

Cream nodded, mollified. She didn't really understand what it meant to be Donna, but everyone always seemed to be so happy and excited to see her mother whenever she was around, so Cream assumed it must be a good thing. She wanted to be just like that when she was older.

…

"What's wrong now?" Cream asked warily, noticing how the others were cringing again.

"What? Oh, uh, we're, just, uh…" Vector stammered awkwardly.

"So… Delighted that you look up to your mother like that and want to be just like her someday!" Amy said quickly.

"Y-yes, I feel the same way about my mother," Rouge said quickly, forcing a smile.

"And my daughter has said the same thing about me many times. It always brings a smile to my face," Blaze added.

Cream frowned, giving them a suspicious look… Then shrugged it off and continued.

…

Omochao led them to a small clearing where three eggs were sitting in a nest of cushions and heated pads. One was white and pink, one was blue and yellow, and the last one was black and red. As Cream squealed in delight and rushed over to examine the eggs, Vanilla quietly murmured to Omochao, "Only three?"

"Your specifications were VERY exacting, Donna," Omochao said apologetically. "On the plus side, this means it'll be easier for your daughter to make her pick."

"That's true," Vanilla conceded. As they walked over to join the giddy younger rabbit, Vanilla asked the robot, "So, what can you tell us about these eggs, Omochao?"

Omochao flew over to hover above the three eggs. "Each of these eggs comes from one of our finest pedigrees, and is a culmination of generations of careful breeding. The white and pink egg was laid by Angel, our finest Hero Chao, whose lineage has bred true for compassion, love, and kindness. The blue and yellow egg was laid by Neph, one of our best Neutral Chao, whose lineage boasts undying loyalty and devotion for their owners. The last egg was laid by Rascal, possibly our most infamous Dark Chao, whose line tends to be very strong but also rather mischievous. Any of these would make a fine companion for a future Donna!"

"So, which one would you like, Cream?" Vanilla asked gently.

Cream looked from one egg to the other, back-and-forth, chewing on her lip in uncertainty. "Can't I take them all?" She asked timidly.

Vanilla shook her head. "I don't think you're ready for THAT level of responsibility just yet. For the time being, I think one pet is enough."

"But…b-but… I can't choose!" Cream cried anxiously. "They all sound wonderful! And…a-and what will happen to whichever two eggs I DON'T pick? Will whatever comes out of them feel sad that I didn't choose them instead?"

"I'm sure they'll be just fine," Vanilla said soothingly.

"But how can I _know?_ " Cream insisted.

"Don't worry, we'll make certain each of them eventually finds a loving home," Omochao assured Cream. "That's what we do here! Why, it's not like we grind up unwanted Chao so they can be fed intravenously to some sort of ancient horror to fuel its unending hatred for all life on this world! That would be silly!"

Vanilla and Cream stared at the robot blankly. "That's… An oddly specific denial," Vanilla said carefully.

"Yes, it is!" Omochao said cheerfully.

"Welp, I'm convinced!" Cream said with a shrug. "Time to pick an egg!"

…

Everyone stared at Cream. "… In my defense, I had no idea what he was talking about and was too fixated on the idea of getting a Chao of my own," Cream said timidly.

"Chao Chao!" Cheese chirped.

"I'm never going to look at Chao Gardens the same way again," Amy said, going pale.

"Why? He said they weren't grinding up unwanted Chao so they can be fed intravenously to some sort of ancient horror to fuel its unending hatred for all life on this world," Knuckles said.

"… Knuckles, did it occur to you that it might have been LYING?" Asked an exasperated Shadow.

The echidna thought about this for a long minute. "No, it did not," he admitted.

"Okay, I think we need to make investigating the Chao Company our next big priority," Tails decided.

Rouge nodded. "With that and Shade's fears, I think we've more than enough reasonable evidence to justify a look around the place."

"And if they don't like us poking around… Well, tough," Sonic growled. "We tend to have a habit of going wherever we want, ESPECIALLY if it's to places other people don't want us to go. You could even say we've made a career out of it!"

"Sounds like fun. If I'm available, you can count me in as well," Blaze said, aroused by her beloved's thirst for adventure.

"I-WHOLEHEARTEDLY-APPROVE-OF-THIS-PLAN," Omega said. "ESPECIALLY-IF-IT-MEANS-I-GET-TO-KILL-THINGS."

"That can wait until we're done here," Silver said apathetically. "Cream, I assume you chose the middle egg?"

Cream nodded. "You assume correctly."

…

"Well… I think… I'll choose… This one!" Cream declared, pointing at the middle egg.

"Oh? Why that one?" Vanilla asked, raising an eyebrow. "I was expecting you to choose the egg from the Hero Chao."

"It sounds very nice," Cream admitted. "But something about the Neutral egg feels… Right to me. I can't explain why, I just know that that's the one for me!"

Vanilla smiled indulgently and nodded. "Very well. If that's the one you want, that's the one you'll get."

"Wonderful! The paperwork should be ready for you to pick up on your way out. I'm happy you were able to find a companion for your daughter, Donna!" Omochao said, sounding delighted.

Cream walked over to the egg, picked it up, and started nuzzling it. "Hello, little friend… You and I are going to have a wonderful time together, I just know it!" She blinked in surprise as the egg started to shake and crack. "Oh no! I broke it!"

"Far from it!" Omochao said, looking surprised. "It's not breaking, it's-"

The egg broke apart, revealing a perfectly ordinary-looking Neutral Chao. "Hatching!" Vanilla gasped.

"Chao Chao!" The Chao chirped.

Cream's eyes widened to their maximum, bright and shining, and she started squealing so high-pitch that it began to pass out of the range of audible hearing and into the sort of noise that only dogs could pick up. "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! HE'S PERFECT!" She grabbed the Chao and started nuzzling and cuddling and hugging it with great vigor, much to its delight. "I'm going to name you… Cheese!"

"Chao!" The newly christened Cheese replied happily, which Cream took to mean that he liked the name. She giggled giddily, ecstatic to have a new friend.

"Incredible… I don't think I've EVER seen a Chao egg hatch that quickly!" Said an amazed Omochao. "Usually it takes a bit more time and care from the new owner, but your daughter… She bonded with and hatched her egg almost instantaneously! Such an ability is incredible… And… Potentially useful… Err, from a Chao-raising standpoint, that is!" It said quickly.

Vanilla smiled and nodded. "Yes, my daughter's capacity for compassion is virtually boundless. I think it would be almost impossible for her to find something or someone in this world that she is incapable of loving."

"I see…" Omochao murmured. "But… Is that sort of thing truly suitable for one who will one day become Donna? I mean… A heart that big, in that line of work…"

Vanilla smiled. "I can understand why you might think it a detriment, but… Somehow, I think she'll be all right, especially with companions as loyal and dependable as Cheese by her side. And besides…" Her smile grew as she watched her daughter play with her new friend. "Maybe a little more love is just what the family business needs…"

…

"And that's how I got Cheese!" Cream concluded.

The others applauded. "That was an absolutely adorable story," Blaze said fondly.

"Yes, and one without any sinister undertones or disturbing and shocking revelations whatsoever," Vector said a little loudly.

"OR-ANY-FIGHTING. IT-WAS-BORING!" Omega complained.

"Now, now, they don't always have to be great epics," Rouge said with a smile. "Sometimes something short and sweet is all we really need."

"I suppose you got Chocola when Vanilla decided that you responsible enough for a second pet after all and took you back to the Chao Garden to get one?" Espio asked.

"Oh no, Chocola is a changeling the Goblin King replaced Cheese with the first time the Chao kingdom called upon me to stop him in an attempt to prevent me from foiling his evil plans. I saw right through the ploy, however – like anyone would EVER be able to replace Cheese without me realizing it! – But showered him with so much love and affection anyway that he decided to turn on the King and become a Chao full-time so that he could live with me and receive the happy lifestyle he never got in his own realm," Cream said matter-of-factly.

Everyone stared at the rabbit in disbelief. "That… Actually sounds like a really interesting story," said an amazed Shadow.

"Yeah, I'd love to hear more about that, and how you became the immortal Empress, and your other battles against the Goblin King!" Charmy agreed eagerly.

"IT-WOULD-CERTAINLY-BE-MORE-INTERESTING-THAN-THE-STORY-WE-JUST-HEARD," Omega said.

"Rude! But not entirely inaccurate. Please, tell us more!" Said a fascinated Amy.

"Yes, I think we would all like to hear more about the sorts of fantastical and magical adventures you go on when we aren't around," Blaze agreed.

"Something of which I'm still jealous, even though rationally I know I shouldn't be," Sonic added.

"Well, okay-" Cream started.

"No," Silver said bluntly.

The others looked at the time traveler in surprise. "No? But-" Tails started.

"The only story I wanted to hear from Cream was how she got Cheese," Silver said. "I don't really care about anything else. You can hear her other stories on your own time, right now we need to focus on getting the information I need to stop Eggman Nega."

"Hey, now-" an annoyed Mighty started.

"No, he's right," Cream interrupted. "Saving the world and all our timelines is more important than some silly old stories. I can tell you all the rest later, if you're still interested."

Rouge sighed and shook her head. "Cream, sometimes I think you're too generous for your own good. But if that's how you want to play it, then I guess we should follow your example."

"Blaze, think you're up for the next part?" Sonic asked.

The cat nodded. "I think I am sufficiently rested, yes. Let's see now, where were we? Oh yes, we were about to head to the Feywoods-"

"Wait, before we move on, there's one more thing I want to know, Cream," Knuckles interrupted.

"What is it, Knuckles?" The rabbit asked.

"If it's about changelings, I can tell you that readily enough. They're-" Rouge started.

"No, no, that's not it," Knuckles interrupted. "Cream, a while back you said your father was a human and promised you'd tell us about it later. Well, it's later now. Who is it?"

"Now, I don't really think we need to know-" an annoyed Silver started.

"Oh yeah, I completely forgot about that!" Sonic said, snapping his fingers.

"Yeah, you promised you'd tell us!" Charmy agreed.

"…Oh yeah, I _did_ say that, didn't I?" the rabbit asked, looking slightly uncomfortable.

"That you did, sweetie. So spill. Who was it?" Rouge asked, intrigued.

"Yes, what sort of guy was Vanilla into?" Vector asked desperately. "Er, for reference's sake."

Cream bit her lip, looking uneasy. "Cream, darling, if you don't want to tell us because it makes you uncomfortable, you don't have to," Blaze said gently.

"YES-SHE-DOES," Omega interjected. Blaze glared him.

"N-no, it's okay," Cream said quickly. "I suppose… I suppose you were going to find out sooner or later. Just… Just promise me one thing, okay?"

"Sure, what?" Sonic asked.

"That… That you won't think any differently of me once you learn who he is?" Cream asked anxiously.

"We promise," Tails said.

"I-DON'T," Omega said. They ignored him.

Cream took a deep breath. "Okay… My father is… Dr. Eggman."

There was a long pause. "I'm sorry, what?" Espio asked after moment.

"Could you repeat that, please? I thought you said your father was Dr. Eggman," Rouge said.

"That's because he is. Dr. Eggman. He's my father," Cream repeated.

They stared at her. "You keep saying that," Mighty said slowly. "But it continues not to make any sense."

"Look, I don't care if it doesn't make any sense to you, Dr. Eggman is my father. And that's that," Cream snapped, starting to get frustrated.

"But… But… That doesn't… How… How would that even be…" Knuckles stammered, looking completely and utterly flabbergasted.

"When a mommy rabbit and a daddy mad scientist love each other very much and…" Shadow began, only to freeze in midsentence. "No. Oh God, no, I can't, I just can't. The mental images, they… I can't unthink them."

"Gee, thanks for that, Shadow," Rouge said with a grimace.

Sonic stared off into the distance, a shellshocked look on his face. "I think I begin to understand at last why Shade almost went insane when she first encountered Gizomochao. Some things are just too horrible to contemplate."

"This certainly puts that time Eggman kidnapped Vanilla when we first met Cream in a whole new light," Tails said, dazed.

"But if she… With Eggman!? Then that… And I… But we…ahiuoahgfshfdskwg!" Vector gurgled, collapsing to the ground in a twitching, drooling heap as his brain struggled to process this latest horrifying revelation about the woman he was in love with.

Cream cringed. "Yeah, I think I'm starting to understand why I never told any of you before now."

"Why DIDN'T you tell any of us before now?!" Amy demanded. "Or at least me?! I thought we were best friends, Cream!"

"We are!" Cream insisted. "But both Mommy and Daddy asked me not to tell anyone who Daddy really was. At the time I figured it was because they just wanted to keep things private for whatever reason because grown-ups do things I don't understand all the time. It's only today I started to understand that there might actually be a very good reason they wouldn't want anyone else to know. You know, because they were worried that widespread knowledge that I'm related to one of the most wanted and dangerous men alive might have a negative effect on my life or turn my friends against me or something like that."

"How did you not figure that out before now?!" An incredulous Charmy asked.

"Because I'm incredibly innocent and naïve! As if that weren't obvious enough already!" An exasperated and upset Cream retorted. "Though getting less so as the day goes on, it would seem."

"Cream, honey, we're sorry if we seem upset," Rouge said quickly. "We aren't angry with you, we're just… Surprised is all."

"That is an understatement," said a still-reeling Mighty.

"MY-CREATOR-PROCREATED? DOES-NOT-COMPUTE. DOES-NOT-COMPUTE. DOES-NOT-COMPUTE," Omega groaned, shaking and sparking as steam leaked from the sides of his head.

Cream whimpered. "Cream," Blaze said quickly. "This is a bit of a shock, but I assure you, we will not think any less of you for being the daughter of… That man. You are a good and pure and wonderful little girl, and all the horrible things he's done have no reflection on you whatsoever, just like all the things the ancient sphinxes did had no relation to my daughter Honey, and just as I refused to treat her differently because of her ancestry, neither shall I mistreat you because of your parentage. You are our _friend_ , and that will not change, no matter _who_ your father is."

Sonic nodded in agreement. "Yeah, what he said. You're our friend, Cream, and even if your dad is…*Shudder*Eggman, that won't change." The others nodded in agreement, though some needed a little more prompting than others, minds still struggling to comprehend this latest piece of news.

"Th-thank you, Blaze, Sonic, everyone," Cream said, relaxing slightly. "I'm glad to hear that."

"I still want to know how the heck this could happen!" Knuckles spoke up. "Not… Not the, you know, _physical_ bits, obviously, but how… You know… Vanilla, and Eggman… They don't exactly seem…"

"They aren't," Cream said. "Not anymore, anyway."

"But they were, once," Espio gathered.

Cream nodded. "Yes. Once."

"What happened?" Amy asked, still struggling to comprehend how Vanilla, a wonderful older woman whom she greatly respected and at times considered a third mother, was not only an infamous crime boss but a former paramour of their sworn enemy.

"One-night stand?" Charmy suggested.

"VANILLA AIN'T NO SLUT!" Vector snapped, regaining his sanity at the perceived slight against his crush's honor.

"No, she's not," Rouge agreed.

"Well, of course not, my mother's a rabbit, not a nightstand," said a confused Cream.

"Cream, how _did_ it happen?" Sonic asked. "If you feel comfortable telling us, of course."

"Well, several years ago, Grandpa made Mommy go back to school to earn some degrees he felt she needed before he felt comfortable handing over the family business to her," Cream began. "While she was there, she met Dr. Eggman, who was teaching classes in robotics and engineering and wasn't evil just yet. They struck it off, fell in love, and eventually got married."

"Awwww, that's adorable!" Amy cooed, before remembering she was gushing over the romance of her arch enemy, a rather ugly and morbidly obese older man, and had to struggle not to throw up.

"Unfortunately, it was not to last," Cream said sadly, hugging an equally sad Cheese. "When Daddy became obsessed with getting revenge on the world for not taking his ideas to use animals as a power source for his robots seriously, things became… Strained between him and Mommy. She thought that he was being silly fixating on something like this, and wanted nothing to do with his plans for world domination even if it _did_ mean she'd become a Queen, and he was angry that she wasn't supporting him like he thought a good wife should. They argued a lot, and eventually got a divorce. Soon after that, I was born."

"Geez," Sonic whispered.

"… That's kind of sad, actually," Charmy admitted.

"Eh, I would still lay all the blame on him," Mighty said.

"As well you should! Vanilla did absolutely nothing wrong!" Vector insisted firmly.

"They're still on… Well, they could be on better terms, I guess, but it could also be worse," Cream said. "He comes over to visit on the holidays, and sometimes I spend weekends at his place. She also gives him a pretty big alimony check every month, which I think, with the advantage of hindsight and a slightly diminished naïveté, may be one of the major sources of funding for his world domination schemes."

"… Just how big a check is that, exactly?" Asked an incredulous Sonic.

"Well, Vanilla IS very rich…" Tails pointed out.

"Vector, you REALLY have to marry this woman," Espio said.

The crocodile flushed. "I'll, uh, I'll work on it."

"Rouge, if Eggman is using money provided by Vanilla to fund his plans…" Shadow murmured to the bat.

"Then she could be charged as an accessory? Something to keep in mind if we ever need to go after her," Rouge replied. She smirked. "After all, wasn't Al Capone taken down because of tax evasion?"

"So… Then, when Eggman kidnapped your mom the first time we met, and I had to go Super to rescue her…" Sonic inquired.

"He thought she hadn't sent him the alimony check for that month and was trying to force her to give it to him. It later turned out that it just got lost in the mail," Cream explained.

"And that time you called me to Eggman's Cryptic Castle to help you find Cheese… You never DID say how you got there…" Amy recalled. "I thought you'd gotten kidnapped, but…"

"No, I was staying there that weekend and couldn't find Cheese so I decided to call you for help," Cream confirmed.

"You couldn't get your…'dad' to help you?" Espio asked, trying not to feel too revolted by the word that had just come out of his mouth. This was going to take some getting used to.

"No, he was busy dealing with the Black Arms invasion and Mr. Shadow attacking his castle," Cream explained.

Shadow blushed as everyone looked at him. "Oops…"

"To be fair, I wouldn't really trust any of Eggman's robots to be able to find Cheese without screwing it up somehow," Charmy said. "Err, no offense, Cream."

"No, no, I understand perfectly," Cream agreed. "I love Daddy, but he's… Well… Not exactly the most reliable, you know?"

"But… How CAN you love him?" Asked an incredulous Amy. "I mean, I know that it's almost impossible for you to hate anyone, Cream, but he's…"

"I know what he is, Amy," Cream said wearily. "But he's also the man who makes the most wonderful toys for me on my birthday and Christmas, and builds robots who have no other purpose than to make me smile, and takes time out of his busy schedule scheming to destroy you all to play with me whenever I'm visiting, and has promised on more than one occasion that once he rules the world he'll give me a big part of it to do whatever I want with, even though I've told him more than once I don't WANT that. I know he's a bad guy and we fight him all the time and we can't let him win, but… He's still my dad, and I love him, and I think he loves me, as much as someone like him can."

"… That's… Actually really touching," Rouge admitted. "I wouldn't have expected that from Eggman."

"Who would've thought Eggman would have a… Not-so-bad side?" A bewildered Sonic wondered.

"There's a lesson to be learned from this, Beloved," Blaze said.

"I know, I know, I can't expect people to be one-dimensional characters… Not even Eggman, I suppose," Sonic mused.

"But… No, something about that still doesn't make sense!" Amy protested. "Cream, if your father loves you so much, then… Why does he try to kill you all the time, like the rest of us?"

"Hey, yeah, why does he do that?" Knuckles asked.

Cream shrugged. "He says that on the clock, he can't treat me any differently from anyone else so long as I persist in opposing him. He also says that he can't go easy on me just because I'm his daughter, and if I'm going to be the eventual heir to his Empire, I'm going have to earn it."

"… And… Your mom is okay with this?" Asked a bewildered Mighty.

"She says it'll be good practice for when I take over the family business," Cream said. "I don't really understand what she means, but I figure it's a good thing." They exchanged somewhat uncomfortable looks at this.

"Your mom is really okay with you constantly risking your life fighting your father?" Charmy repeated, still having trouble wrapping his head around this. Was that the sort of thing mothers normally did? Given that his mother had apparently abandoned him for having an annoying voice, he couldn't really tell.

"Why not? I'm fine with my daughter risking her life in great battles all the time," Blaze spoke up.

"Well, yes, but… Honey's a warrior, and Cream is…well…" Tails said hesitantly.

"Not?" Shadow quipped.

"Well, I wouldn't quite go that far…" The Fox said sheepishly.

"It's all right, really," Cream insisted. "Mommy trusts in me not to get in over my head, and is confident that so long as I have Cheese, all of you, and Alonzo by my side, she has nothing to worry about."

They exchanged confused looks. "Who's Alonzo?" Vector asked.

"He is," Cream said, nodding at something behind them.

They turned… And were astonished to discover that, leaning against one of the picnic tables and sipping a cup of punch, was an absolutely gargantuan elephant dressed in a black two-piece suit with a white shirt and red tie with a dapper Fedora. "Hello," the elephant said, tipping his head to them.

"What… Where did he come from?!" Cried a startled Mighty.

"I have the ability to smell the blood and hear the heartbeat of everything for miles… How did I not notice his?!" The astonished Rouge demanded. She frowned in thought, and then her eyes widened. "For that matter… I _still_ can't…"

"MY-SENSORS-PICKED-UP-NOTHING," Omega said. "HOW-IS-THIS-POSSIBLE?"

"Oh, I've been here the whole time," the elephant said. "You just didn't notice me. Much like the armadillo, except in my case it's because I'm very stealthy instead of the rest of you being stupid and unobservant."

"…Ouch," Sonic winced.

"That hurts," Knuckles complained.

"Kind of accurate, though," Tails admitted.

"Yeah, especially in Vector's case!" Charmy agreed, causing the crocodile to flush.

"You're a giant elephant! How can you be stealthy?!" Asked an incredulous Shadow.

"With a great deal of effort. If you think that's impressive, though, you should get a load of those guys," the elephant said, nodding to the side.

They turned again… And saw about half a dozen black-clad ninjas standing there the food table, munching on chili dogs. They stopped what they were doing when they noticed they were being watched, and waved cheerfully.

"I… Did not detect them either," said a stunned Rouge.

"Have they been here the whole time as well?" Asked an astonished Blaze.

"Yep. And you didn't notice them because they're REAL ninjas who are actually good at their job instead of posers like the chameleon," the elephant grunted.

"… Words hurt…" Espio moped.

"Cream, I assume that these are… Friends of yours?" Vector asked.

Cream nodded. "Yep! Alonzo is my bodyguard, and the ninjas are part of a clan sworn to protect my family for generations. They follow me everywhere, on all our adventures, and you just never noticed them until I pointed them out just now."

"We are VERY good at being stealthy," the elephant, Alonzo, said with pride.

"Well…uh… You certainly are, that," Sonic said awkwardly. "Um, keep up the good work, I guess."

"Sure thing," Alonzo said, sipping his punch.

"Cream, could you please explain WHY you have a ninja clan sworn to protect your family?" Asked a dumbfounded Amy. "The bodyguard I can understand, but… Ninjas?!"

"One of my ancestors apparently rendered them a great service a long time ago, and they swore eternal loyalty to my family as a result," Cream said. "I don't actually know what it was, but it must've been something really good!"

"Let's… Assume that, yes," Shadow said uncomfortably.

"So what's your story, big guy? Is your family indebted to Cream's for some ancient service as well, and you're the latest in a long line of noble guardians and protectors?" Charmy asked.

"Nah, I just get paid a lot. Like, a lot a lot," Alonzo said. "Usually I'd say more than you could imagine, but given that a surprising number of you are really very wealthy, I imagine that you could imagine pretty high. So let's just say it's more money than those three sorry excuses for detectives could imagine, let alone are likely to see in their lifetimes."

"… Really doesn't like us, does he?" Vector muttered.

"No, I don't. I think the three of you are the worst detectives I've ever seen, can only barely qualify as heroes, are lowlifes who my charge is way too good to be hanging out with… Oh, and you have absolutely no chance whatsoever with Miss Vanilla," Alonzo said.

"Alonzo! You don't need to be mean to my friends!" Cream scolded the elephant as the Chaotix cringed.

"Miss Cream, your mother pays me to keep you safe. Nowhere in my contract does it say I have to be nice to your friends," Alonzo said bluntly. "Anyway, don't let me bother you. You guys can go back to your storytelling fun and games. Just pretend I'm not here, and it'll be exactly like it was before you knew I existed."

"How exactly are we supposed to pretend you're not here when you're standing right there?!" Knuckles demanded.

"Oh, it's easy. All of you, close your eyes and count to 10. You too, Omega," Alonzo said.

"I-DO-NOT-HAVE-EYELIDS," Omega argued.

"No, but you can shut down your optic sensors for a little bit, can't you?" The elephant pointed out.

"Just do as he says, Omega, I'm curious to see where this is going," Rouge said.

"FINE," Omega grumbled, his eyes going dim.

"There you go. And remember, no peeking! Trust me, I'll know!" Alonzo said as, one by one, everyone curiously or reluctantly closed their eyes.

"This feels stupid," Charmy grumbled.

"It would probably be a good idea not to antagonize the giant super-stealthy elephant," Tails pointed out. Charmy gulped and went silent.

After a count of 10, everyone opened their eyes…

And Alonzo was gone! So were the ninjas, but that was to be expected, really. "What the… Where did he go?" Sonic asked.

"MY-SENSORS-DO-NOT-DETECT-HIM-ANYWHERE," Omega reported.

"I can't sense him either," Rouge added. "But I couldn't sense him before, either, which might not mean anything."

"Which could mean that he's probably still here, hiding somehow, and we have no way of knowing it?" Knuckles asked, spooked.

"Most likely, yes," Blaze said.

"How the heck does he do it? Is this guy able to make himself invisible or something, like Espio?" Vector wondered.

"Nope, I'm just REALLY stealthy," Alonzo whispered in the crocodile's earhole. Vector yelped and whirled around… Only to see that the elephant was nowhere to be seen. Disembodied laughter could be heard all around them, but it was unclear what direction it was coming from.

"Wow, this guy's REALLY good," Mighty said with a whistle.

"I am extremely jealous," Espio glowered.

"Cream, do YOU know where he is?" Amy asked the rabbit.

Cream shook her head. "No, I never know where he or the ninjas are unless they want me to know. He says it's the hallmark of a good bodyguard."

"He must be a VERY good one, then," Shadow commented.

"One of the best in the business," Alonzo whispered into the black hedgehog's ear. To his credit, Shadow did not start, nor did he turn around, for he already knew that he would not find anything there.

"Alonzo's promised to teach me how to detect him, the ninjas, or any other friends or enemies who are concealed from view when I'm a little older," Cream explained. "I'm not ready for that just yet, though, so I'm content in knowing that they're always close at hand, even if I don't know where."

"A skill like that will definitely come in handy," Blaze said approvingly.

Cream nodded. "Yeah, Mommy says it'll be crucial once I take over the family business." Everyone struggled not to cringe at this.

"So… Putting aside the elephant… And ninjas… in the room, something just occurred to me," Tails said awkwardly, trying to change the subject.

"What's that?" Sonic asked his sidekick.

"Shadow, you were created by Professor Gerald Robotnik, and more or less consider him your father, just like I consider Dr. Blue mine, right?" Tails asked Shadow.

The black hedgehog nodded. "That is correct."

"So… Considering that Eggman is the Professor's grandson, and he's Cream's father, that would make her Gerald Robotnik's great-granddaughter," Tails continued his line of thought. "Which would make you…"

Cream's eyes widened in astonishment. "My… Great-uncle! Oh my gosh, that never occurred to me!"

Shadow was very still for a very long time, staring off into the distance. "I… I have family? From my terrestrial half?"

"Wait, doesn't Eggman-" Amy started.

"He's disowned, he doesn't count!" Shadow snapped.

Timidly, Cream approached the Ultimate Lifeform. "Can… Can I call you Grunkle Shadow?"

Without warning, Shadow burst into tears and hugged the rabbit, sobbing, "You can call me whatever you want, sweetie!"

"Awwwwwww!" Just about everyone cooed.

"You're recording this, right?" Rouge muttered to Omega.

"OF-COURSE," the robot said.

The bat grinned sinisterly. "Excellent."

A very annoyed Silver cleared his throat. "This has been a very lovely and very pointless detour, but can we PLEASE get back to what's important?"

"Oh, if we must," Shadow grumbled, regaining his composure, though he did not let go of his niece. Not yet. He stared at her adoringly, wondering how he couldn't have realized this sooner. Her eyes were so much like Maria's… They weren't the same color, but they had the same purity and love for life that she had. Shadow vowed in that moment that he would make sure that Cream would never lose that sparkle. He had already been forced to watch someone he cared for lose it once; he didn't think he could stand to watch another person he loved lose it again.

"Are you up to continuing your story, Blaze?" Sonic asked his girlfriend. "For real, this time?"

The cat nodded and stood up, causing her Biter to whimper when it realized it wasn't going to get any more petting anytime soon. "I believe so, yes. I've rested enough."

"Wonderful!" Silver said in relief.

"You know, while it'll be nice hearing more of Blaze's epic fantasy quest, I have to say, this little intermission wasn't half-bad," Mighty commented.

Rouge nodded. "Yes, I expected this to be a cute, fluffy, but ultimately inconsequential interlude. Instead, we actually learned quite a lot!"

"Yeah, like how Cream's dad is Dr. Eggman, her great-uncle is Shadow, Chocola is actually a goblin in disguise, and her mom is really a vicious mom boss!" Knuckles agreed.

Cream blinked. "Wait, my mom is WHAT?!"

"KNUCKLES!" Everyone screamed at the echidna.

"What?!" He yelled back indignantly.

"I thought we agreed NOT to tell her that! Why would you do that?!" An enraged Amy demanded.

Knuckles threw his hands up in exasperation. "Well, I figured that if she was okay with having Eggman as a dad, and Shadow as a great-uncle, and a former goblin like Chocola as a pet or an ex-weapon of mass destruction like Gemerl as a housemate, she'd be fine with Vanilla being a ruthless criminal mastermind!"

Cream paled. "My mom… My mom's a criminal?!"

Knuckles laughed nervously. "Apparently, I was wrong." Everyone groaned.

"You THINK?!" Shadow snarled.

"No, that would require him to actually be capable of doing so the first place," Espio said dryly.

"Knuckles, I honestly have to wonder sometimes why we even take you places," said a frustrated Sonic.

"Because if left to his own devices he'd break his own sacred charge just to pass the time?" Mighty grumbled.

"I'm trying not to do that anymore," the echidna said weakly.

"And how's that working out?" Shadow said venomously, resisting the urge to throttle the echidna for shattering his great-niece's worldview.

"… Could be better…" Knuckles muttered sheepishly.

"Nice going, moron," Alonzo growled into Knuckles' ear. "The Donna's not going to be pleased to hear about this…" The echidna gulped.

"My… My m-mother is… I…I don't understand…" Cream whispered, dazed.

"Blaze!" Vector said urgently. "Story! Now!"

"R-right!" The cat said quickly. "So, anyway, after Damil recovered, we dug him up and headed to the Feywood, where we had all sorts of fantastical adventures involving fairies and elves and other magical creatures!"

That seemed to snap Cream out of her shock. "Ooh, fairies – wait a minute, I realize what you're trying to do! You're trying to distract me in hopes that I forget about whatever horrible thing you're implying about my mother! Well, that's not going to work this-"

"Did I mention I got to ride a unicorn?" Blaze asked desperately.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Cream, Amy, and, surprisingly, Espio cried shrilly.

There was a pause, and everyone stared at the chameleon. "Wh-what? I like unicorns, okay?!" He snapped.

"In his defense, it's a very good show," Tails said.

"Thank you," Espio said in relief.

"Though that does not excuse the unmanly squeal," Tails continued. Espio groaned.

"Tell me about the unicorn!" Cream demanded eagerly.

"Yeah, tell us about the unicorn!" Amy added.

Blaze breathed a private sigh of relief as everyone else relaxed, the crisis averted, at least for the time being. "Well, I didn't see the unicorn right away, mind you. What happened was…"

…

Another chapter done! And way, way, WAY sooner than I, or you, expected, I wager.

Unfortunately, I can't guarantee the next one will be done as quickly, considering that it's going to be another rather long one, though hopefully not as long as the last one, though as always, I make no promises.

Anyway, it's time to vote again for whose origin will be told after the conclusion of Blaze's. Who will it be? You can pick from **Big, Fang, the Babylon Rogues** , or **Sticks.** We are entering the home stretch!

Until next time, Happy New Year!


	10. Blaze's Legend part 2

And we're back, again! Apologies for this one not coming out quite as quickly as the last one, but hey, I warned you that would probably be the case. Anyway, sit back, relax, and read the conclusion of Blaze's origin story! I hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.

…

Over the next hour or so-though it felt far longer-Blaze regaled her enthralled audience with tales of adventure as she and her companions traveled across the ravaged land of Solana to make allies, fight evil, and retrieve the seven Sol Emeralds.

She told them how she had ventured into the Feywood and earned the lifelong loyalty of Queen Na'Ciel of the Fairy Nation by burning the vile Sinasthuriellara, city of the wicked High Elves, to the ground for the atrocities they had visited against fairykind, abducting fairies and ripping off their wings to be ground up and used in opiates before tossing them out into the streets to die. Even Cream did not seem too upset when Blaze recounted how she had rampaged through the burning city's streets on the back of a unicorn, the head of the Elf King Fealgoden impaled on its horn, especially after hearing how he had nearly used glamour to manipulate Blaze into giving Honey to him. The assault on the fortress where the first Emerald was kept with the aid of the fairies and the (relatively) friendlier Wood Elves, and the defeat of its Shika Inves commander, was almost an afterthought.

She told them how she had journeyed to the volcanic Mount Amadruin and sought the aid of the dwarves of Orzak'khria, who were already mounting an attack on the nearby Emerald Fortress but were concerned an ancient foe bound deep within the volcano was soon to break free. She told them how she had journeyed into the mountain's depths only to find the foe was a very old and very tired dragon who had been kept in a near-death state for centuries by the ancient dwarves, who had feared that her death throes would destroy everything they had built. How she had shamed the dwarven elders for unwittingly perpetuating this atrocity, then granted the dragon the sweet release of death she had craved for so long and inadvertently hatching her long-dormant eggs, becoming the adoptive mother to a brood of dragonets and giving Honey some siblings. Eyes lighting up at the memory of the great siege, she then described how she and the dwarves had stormed the fortress and slain its leader, Red Pine's mighty colleague Yellow Zelkova, in heated battle and claimed his Emerald.

Distaste evident in her voice, she then went on to tell them of her voyage to the (very, VERY wet) undersea city of Mulantis, which no longer had to worry about Helheim invasion...because the incursion of the Doom Tree roots in the undersea trenches had awoken the mad whale god Cetus, who had destroyed the fortress, claimed its Emerald, and was now trying to wipe Mulantis out as well. (Vindicating both Blaze and Sonic's assertions that whales were pure evil.) She explained how she had vanquished the mad god by castrating him as part of a ritual to summon the infamous Master Shark ed'Rastekeresket t'k Gh'shestaesteh (leading to a brief aside as to how to pronounce that name as well as a discussion about how whale penises were apparently very long and very prehensile) to devour him, earning her the unending enmity of all whalekind due to Cetus' death cure and beginning her long, bitter feud with the cetacean race that would only lead when one of them was completely eradicated from the world. (Sonic cheerfully and wholeheartedly offered to help with the extermination, much to the discomfort of his friends.).

She then told them of her journey to the flying island of Phoenixia, home of the immortal, mystical, and rather aloof phoenixes (leading to inevitable comparisons to echidnas, much to Knuckles' frustration), where she had the joyful experience of seeing the night sky for the first time in eons and the terror of realizing she was acrophobic. (Fear of heights, not acrobats, that's something else.) She told them of how she had not only broke a siege caused by the clever tactician Pale Bayleaf and claimed his Emerald, but also prevented the Phoenix Elders from using the Emeralds she'd collected to perform a spell that would eradicate all life on the surface to eliminate the threat of Helheim (and everything else) for good by rallying public support against this plan by capitalizing on the common phoenixes' belief that she was an avatar of the deity Solana (leading to a debate as to whether or not it was ethical to pretend to be a god if it's for a good cause and then never get around to correcting that assumption for the sake of political expediency, and more comparison to the ancient echidnas, much to Knuckles' frustration). Also, Honey had learned how to fly, which Blaze considered the best part of it all.

She had then delved from the heavens above to the dank pits of the subterranean Underdark, where the sadistic, cruel, and treacherous Drow lived in the dark city of Shas'zvera, where they were too busy with their petty feuds, plots, and infighting to care that the Inves and other horrible monsters were literally breaking down the city gates. (Not that they would have cared regardless, after all, it was only slaves and commoners who were getting hurt, anyway.) Blaze's attempts to end the succession crisis currently occupying the aristocracy to get them to focus on the real threat resulted in the deaths of both prospective claimants to the throne (no great loss), the Drow spider goddess Arachnolth (see above), numerous evil clergy and nobles (I'm seeing a pattern here) and Blaze herself winding up named Matriarch by dint of beating up everyone else who might have been able to claim that title and terrifying everyone else into submission. After dealing with all that nonsense, it was almost laughably easy to destroy the nearby fortress and claim its Emerald from its Inoshishi Inves guardian.

She bragged about how she'd felt confident in leaving Shas'zvera for their next destination since she was certain she'd cowed the Drow so much they didn't dare try to revert to their old days for fear of what she'd do if she found out, then headed to the Frozen North, a place where it was always winter due to an ancient curse inflicted upon the land by the dreaded Wendigo King Boreas, leading the rest of the kingdom to wall the place up and pretend it had never existed. (Comparisons to the White Walkers was inevitable, as was confusion over the distinction between wendigos and windigos. Since the Doom Tree's expansion had broken the wall, the wendigos threatened to expand their icy reach across the realm, so Blaze was forced to banish the cannibalistic spirits back to the frigid hell they came from before she even thought about tackling the fortress where the sixth Emerald, and its Seiryu Invess keeper, causing the region to start thawing for the first time in ages.

With clear fondness in her voice, she told them how after that, she had headed to much warmer climes in the desert kingdom of Necropolis, land of eternal death, a near-utopia of undeath where the living and the living dead could coexist in harmony, made easier by the fact that pretty much anyone who died there didn't stay dead for long. There Blaze had made another lifelong friend in the form of the Lich Queen Sekhmet, one of the last remaining sphinxes, who had helped Honey to unlock more of her sphinx powers and offered her a home with the rest of her kind, though ultimately she chose to stay with the cat she'd begun to call 'Mother.' All had not been well in Necropolis, however, for the sinister Black Narcissus had been abducting undead to try and find a way to transform them into Inves-the Inves had up until then been ignoring them since they weren't 'alive'-and performing horrific experiments to try and create artificial Sol Emeralds. When the mad scientist abducted Cosmo and Honey, Blaze had gone at him with everything she had, and in his desperation to survive Black Narcissus had been forced to use a dangerous and untested fruit which ultimately overwhelmed him and turned him into a monstrous Inves that was only defeated by the combined efforts of Blaze, Sekhmet, and even Honey, claiming the final Emerald from his remains.

"With that done," Blaze said. "The barrier surrounding Dark Oak's Castle finally went down. With Sekhmet vowing her support, we signaled our allies that it was finally time to reclaim Solana and began marching on the base of the Doom Tree. We swept across the land, defeating every roving band of Inves or monsters in our path, saving every town and settlement we could and destroying those that were too badly infested. As the armies of our allies joined up with us, others chose to march with us, either from the ranks of the people whom we had saved along the way or those who had heard of what we were trying to do and wished to join us in hopes of reclaiming their homeland, or at the very least of dying trying to. As we went on, camaraderie began to build among the troops as deep-seated grudges and rivalries going back hundreds if not thousands of years began to fade away in the face of the monumental enemy which threatened us all. People became friends. Others became _more_ than friends.

"And I? Well, as I led our forces into victory after victory, more and more people started to look up to me. My legend, which had been growing ever since I broke the power of the High Elves of the Feywoods, grew greater and greater as stories of my exploits spread, and more and more people started to revere me and cheer me on and believed that I would be the one to usher in a new future for Solana, something which, to be honest, confused and humbled me. And then, on the eve of the final battle, when we were practically at Dark Oak's doorstep, Cosmo called me into her tent to talk to me about something very important…"

…

Blaze entered the tent, nodding to Damil, looking resplendent in full armor as he stood on duty just outside the door as she went by. The tent was not what most would expect of a temporary residence for a Princess; a cot, a table, a few chairs, a rug, and a few other minor amenities. No expensive rugs or pieces of art or beds or other fancy luxuries. Granted, it was almost impossible to obtain any of those on the march, but even if they were able to find some, Blaze was certain Cosmo would refuse to accept them.

 _My tent is actually bigger than hers_ , Blaze realized all of a sudden. _Granted, I'm sharing it with Honey, but even so… How did that happen?_ "You wanted to see me, Cosmo?" The cat asked her friend.

Cosmo, who was writing something at her table, nodded to one of the simple chairs sitting before it. "Certainly. Please sit down, this'll just take a minute. Would you like something to drink?"

"No thank you, I'm alright," Blaze said as she sat down.

Cosmo nodded, not looking up from whatever she was working on. "All right then, just one more… There. That should do it." She laid down her pen, leaned back in her chair, and sighed in relief before turning to face her friend.

"What was that?" Blaze asked, curious.

"I'll get to that in a minute," Cosmo said evasively. "How are the troops?"

"Morale is very high. Just about everyone believes that we will win tomorrow… Or at the very least, that we'll take as many of them down with us as we can." Blaze fidgeted. "And just about everyone seems to be convinced that it will be I who delivers to them a decisive victory."

"Well, you HAVE been responsible for many of our greatest triumphs in the past," Cosmo pointed out. "And you ARE going to face my father, and you have every confidence that you will beat him, don't you?"

"Well, yes," Blaze admitted. "It's just… I'm still getting used to having so many people look up to and believe in me. It's not something I'm used to."

"It's a good feeling, isn't it?" Cosmo said, smiling warmly.

"… Yes. Yes, it is," Blaze agreed, a fond smile on her face. "More than a demon like me ever thought she deserved."

"You know you're more than that now," Cosmo said sharply.

"I know, I know," Blaze said, lifting her off. "Just a little self-deprecation. Don't want me getting a swelled head from the rather… _Alarming_ number of people who have started to worship me. I kind of feel like I should be putting a stop to that…"

"Don't," Cosmo said firmly. "People need something to believe in, and so far you have rewarded their faith in you a thousandfold. You've certainly done more for them than most of their deities have in the thousands of years they've been worshiped. After all, if none of their gods will deign to set foot on the battlefield, why not worship the demon who has? The demon who has led them to victory after victory, and united them in a way this land has not seen since its inception, if not ever?"

Blaze smiled ruefully. "Well, when you put it like that… I suppose there's no harm. But, if they start making sacrifices in my name, I'm putting my foot down."

"Perfectly understandable," Cosmo said with a giggle. "How are Honey and the kids?"

"I was just finishing putting them to sleep when I got your message," Blaze said fondly. "They wanted me to tell them the story of how I defeated Boreas again and again and again. Do you suppose I should be worried that my adopted children seem to have such a thirst for blood?"

Cosmo chuckled. "Well, it's really to be expected from dragons and someone who's part-Sphinx. So long as you teach them to channel it in a constructive manner, it should be okay."

"I'll do my best, but I'm not sure I'm the best role model for that sort of thing, considering how _I've_ been channeling my bloodlust," Blaze confessed.

"So long as you direct it at the bad guys and only the bad guys, I think you'll be fine," Cosmo said assuredly. She chewed her lip for a moment. "Have… Have you decided what you're going to do once this is all over? Once we win, I mean?"

"I'm not entirely sure," Blaze confessed. "It seems like I have a variety of options ahead of me. The phoenixes want me to come back to their island to be treated like the divinity they're convinced I am. The Drow are begging me to return to the Underdark to rule over them, a prospect which… Is honestly more tempting than I thought it would be. Sekhmet has also offered us a place in Necropolis, which I know Honey would love. I was also considering heading up north, since it should be habitable now that the wendigos are gone, and making a place for myself there. On the other hand, I could also stay with you, because I know you promised me a while back there would be a place for me in your home once this was all over, should I want it. Or I could just wander the land, seeing the sights, righting wrongs, helping people and spreading my legend. And there have been a few other offers from others we have helped and encountered along the way… Though the elves and fairies have rather politely informed me that while I'm always welcome to visit their forest whenever I like, they'd rather I didn't live there out of fear I'll cause another great fire, which I can't really blame them for." She shrugged. "So long as I can provide for Honey and the dragons, I think just about anything would be satisfactory. Why do you ask?"

"I'll… Get to that," Cosmo said. She hesitated, looking uncertain, before finally saying, "Blaze… I have two requests to make of you, and I would like to ask you to think very carefully before answering them."

Blaze narrowed her eyes, looking at her best friend suspiciously. "All right…" She said, wondering where this is going.

Cosmo took a deep breath, then said, "The first thing is… I want to be there tomorrow, when you confront my father."

Blaze blinked in surprise. "That's… Certainly an interesting request. May I ask why?"

Cosmo sighed. "Because, in spite of everything he's done… All the horrible things he's done to this land and its people, and to my family… And to _me_ … Deep down, a part of me still thinks of him as my father, and remembers him as the good man who tucked me into bed and told me stories and let me ride him like a horse on my eighth birthday. Despite everything, I… I still love him, Blaze. And… Before you kill him… I want to give him one last chance. I know it's unlikely, but… I want to try to convince him to stand down. To surrender. I know there's almost no chance of it happening, but… I feel like I just have to _try_ , you know? To see if there is even a single shred of goodness, of the man I once knew, buried somewhere inside the monster he's become." She grimaced. "Or, the very least, I'd like to understand _why_ he's done all this. What rationale could possibly have convinced him that all this, any of this, could've been a good idea…"

"All right," Blaze said.

Cosmo started. "What? Just like that?"

"You're right, there is almost no chance that this will work. Almost no chance that he will change his mind, after everything he's done, after what he's become," Blaze said. "On the other hand… I'm sure that the same might have been said of me once. I was once evil, a mighty destroyer of worlds, and yet now I am a hero, revered by the people of this land. If I could undergo a transformation like that, who's to say that he can't as well?" Smiling, she reached across and took Cosmo's hand. "And aside from that, I honestly believe that if anyone can do a task as impossible as redeeming Dark Oak… It's you, Cosmo. After all, you rescued me, didn't you?"

Instead of responding Cosmo surged forward, wrapping her arms around Blaze, tears of joy and gratitude running down her face.

…

There were very few dry eyes among the listeners. "That was pretty sweet," Amy sniffed grudgingly.

"The two of you were really good friends, weren't you?" Rouge asked, wiping away a tear.

"We still are," Blaze said proudly. "We've had our ups and downs over the years – just like most friendships – but we're still among the most important people in each other's lives."

"Is it any wonder I love her?" Tails said fondly.

"So… Did she do it? Did she manage to redeem her father?" Cream asked hopefully.

Blaze winced. "That's… Getting ahead of myself a little-"

"She didn't, did she?" Espio asked bluntly.

Blaze hesitated, and then sighed. "No," she admitted. "She didn't."

Cream looks distraught. "Not everyone can be redeemed, sweetie," Shadow said sadly.

"But… But then… If she couldn't save her father, then… What does that mean for my parents?" Cream asked anxiously. Shadow hesitated, then bit his lip, not sure what to say to that.

"What was her second request?" Rouge asked. "Although I think I may already have a good idea as to what it was."

…

"You said there was a second request," Blaze said a little later, after Cosmo had let go of her and had a few minutes to compose herself.

Cosmo hesitated. "There is," she said finally. "But this one is a bit… Bigger than the first one."

"Whatever it is, you know you can count on me, right?" Blaze said.

Cosmo sighed. "You may think twice after hearing it. But… Please keep an open mind, okay?"

Blaze fidgeted. "Cosmo, if you're about to confess your love for me, I can't say I'm not flattered, but like I told those Drow, I don't swing that way-"

Cosmo blushed. "Wh-what?! N-no, that's…that isn't… That's not what I was going to say!"

"Oh," Blaze said, looking relieved. "I'm sorry, it's just… Well, we ARE very close, and there are certain… Rumors going around camp-"

"The only affection I feel towards you is that of a friend, or sister," Cosmo assured the cat. "No, it's a bit… Bigger than that." She took a deep breath, then said, "Once you've defeated my father, and this is all over… I'm going to relinquish my claim to the throne and hand it over to you instead."

…

"Wait, WHAT?!" Just about everyone shouted in disbelief.

"Called it!" Rouge crowed triumphantly.

"Yes, that was more or less my reaction as well," Blaze recalled.

…

"Wait, WHAT?!" Blaze shouted disbelief. "Cosmo, if this is some sort of a joke-"

"It's not," Cosmo said seriously. "I'm completely serious about this. I thought long and hard about this, and I honestly believe that this is the right choice to make."

"Perhaps I'm missing something, but in what world would turning down the throne you fought so long and hard for and giving it over to a world-ending demon – no matter how reformed she might be – could possibly seem like the right choice?!" Blaze demanded.

Cosmo sighed. "Blaze, let's face the facts. Who is it that the troops respect more, you or me?"

Blaze hesitated for moment. "Well…"

"Who is it that they attribute the lion's share of their victories and triumphs to?"

"That's-"

"Who was it that saved them time and time again and convinced them to unite into one army to fight Dark Oak, and got them to overlook the millennia of grudges and feuds and prejudices that have kept them divided for most of this country's history?"

"Being popular and good at battle doesn't make me qualified to be a good leader!" Blaze protested desperately. "Not of a nation, anyway!"

Cosmo raised an eyebrow. "I seem to remember you saying that you were seriously considering taking up the Drow on their offer to become their new Matriarch permanently."

Blaze hesitated. "Yes… Well… I said I was CONSIDERING it, not that I'd taken the job, and besides, being the ruler of all of Solana is a lot different than ruling a mid-sized subterranean civilization!"

"Yes, it is," Cosmo admitted. "But that doesn't mean you aren't qualified to rule this nation… Nor that you aren't the only person who HAS to take the job."

"Why?! Why can't you do it?!" Blaze demanded. "It can't just be the popularity thing, lots of countries are ruled by monarchs who are less beloved than war heroes!"

"Blaze, for all my life I was told that my family were the rightful rulers of Solana," Cosmo said. "That we were the only ones who could guide this nation and its people, to protect them from threats within and without, to ensure a future of plenty and prosperity. And all my life, I was lied to.

"Traveling with you, I've seen a side of my kingdom I never even knew existed. The atrocities of the High Elves, what the dwarves were doing to Rubeus, the casual arrogance and bigotry of the phoenixes, the horrors perpetrated by the Drow, the nightmare of the wendigos, the prejudice and discrimination leveled against undead and those with Sphinx blood which was bad enough to convince them to live all the way out in the desert rather than associate with anyone else… All these things have been going on for centuries, thousands of years, some of the dating back to the founding of this nation, others stretching back even FURTHER. All this has been happening right under our nose, and either we've turned a blind eye to it or simply didn't know. Either reason is completely unacceptable, and is it any reason that so many of the people we've run into, both of my own subjects and those of the other peoples who live in these lands, haven't exactly treated me with the respect most would expect to give to a member of royalty?"

"I… Had noticed that, yes," Blaze said uncomfortably.

"And aside from that, there's the fact that my own father, the King of this land, is the architect behind all its current woes," Cosmo said sadly. "Once he's been overthrown, do you REALLY think that people will be willing to accept someone else from his bloodline on the throne?"

"But you aren't like him, Cosmo!" Blaze protested. "Anyone who's met you for even five minutes knows that!"

"Yes, but a great people HAVEN'T met me," Cosmo pointed out. "And even so… This is the end of an era, Blaze. After my father's been defeated, nothing will be the same anymore. The people of this land cannot return to the status quo that's been the norm for so many centuries… If we are to move forward, and become a better nation, we need a new ruler, someone unburdened by the weight of all that has come before. And that someone is you, Blaze."

"But… I don't understand!" Blaze protested. "I-I suppose I can understand why it can't be you, but… Why does it have to be me? Surely there's… There has to be someone else…"

"Like who?" Cosmo sharply.

That caught the cat flat-footed. "Well… Um… Sekhmet…?"

Cosmo snorted. "She's both undead and a Sphinx. You know as well as I do that while everyone may be willing to tolerate her as an ally, they would never willingly accept her as a ruler."

Blaze desperately wracked her mind for an alternative. "Well, then… What about… No… That wouldn't… Perhaps… But no, that wouldn't work either… But… There has to be…"

"There isn't," Cosmo said firmly. "It has to be you, Blaze. Who else do all the people of this land respect and look up to? Who else would they follow into battle without question? Who is it that they believe in, enough so that many literally worship the ground you step on? Who is it that brought them all here, and united them in a way that hasn't happened since this nation's inception, if ever?"

"But… But I…" Why was she having so much difficulty finding arguments? This was a terrible idea. Cosmo was wrong. Had to be. There's no way she could possibly become the next ruler, no way everyone could really think so highly of her. After all, she was… "I'm… A demon. A destroyer. The subject of so many countless prophecies of doom…"

"What you are," Cosmo said softly, taking Blaze's hand. "Is a hero, and the greatest one this land has ever seen. And so what if you're a destroyer? Let me tell you a thing or two about destruction that even a mighty destroyer of worlds like you may not have considered, Blaze…

"You remember what the Wood Elves called you after you destroyed Sinasthuriellara? Wildfire? The name was more appropriate then, I think, than even they knew at the time. As you well know, fire isn't exactly the favored element of my people, given our plant-based nature. However, something we often forget about fires – wildfires in particular – is that while they burn down great swaths of forest, killing trees and plants and animals and leaving vast tract of land dead and unoccupied… In doing so, they create a chance for new life and growth to replace that which was destroyed. Burning the deadwood so fresh life can bloom. And, when you think about it, isn't that exactly what you've done, Blaze?"

"What… What do you mean?" Blaze whispered wonderingly.

"You burned down Sinasthuriellara, destroying the civilization of the High Elves… A civilization dedicated to violence and narcissism and stagnation, freeing the fairies and Wood Elves from their yoke and making the Feywoods a much safer place for everyone within and without it. You convinced the dwarves, among the most stubborn and hard-headed of all the people of Solana, to abandon and destroy their own ancestral home to right an age-old wrong simply because it was the right thing to do. You forced the phoenixes, who have always looked down upon the people of the surface, to back down from genocide and admit it was wrong to do so. You killed two gods and saved two civilizations from their tyranny, in the process taking steps to reform one of the evilest and most dysfunctional races in all the land. You ended the threat of the wendigoes, which has been a black spot upon this kingdom's history for ages, once and for all. You convinced the kingdom of the undead to actually give a damn for the living outside their borders for the first time in, well, maybe ever. You've helped so many other people besides, all over the land… But that isn't the truly remarkable thing that you've done, Blaze.

"Most of the problems that these people we've helped have been suffering from – the ones not related to Helheim or my father, that is – have been going on for longer than anyone can remember. Nobody has done anything about them. Nobody thought that anything COULD be done about them, that it was just the way it was, and there was no point trying to change it. But you didn't see it that way, did you? You refused to let such atrocities and suffering go on simply because that's the way it's always been done. Whenever you had the opportunity to change something, you did, and didn't care about the consequences. Because, ultimately, that's what you've done, Blaze… Brought change, brought HOPE to this kingdom for the first time in centuries. For too long we've been mired in our own problems and issues, not really sparing a thought for other people or how to do anything but _cope_ with the way things were because we convinced ourselves for so long that this was the best we could hope for and it would be too hard to try to change things so we should just accept our lot in life. And you… You've showed us a better way.

"If you look outside this tent now, you'll see something that many would have thought impossible. Fairies and Wood Elves outside their forest. Elves and dwarves actually getting along. Elves and Drow not trying to kill each other on sight. Phoenixes walking the surface without having a look of disgust on their faces. Undead and half-sphinxes being treated with respect instead of scorn. Genuine friendships, and sometimes more, being formed between people who, even a few months ago, wouldn't have wanted anything to do with each other. And none of this could have happened if you hadn't walked into their lives, shaken things up, and showed them that they could be more than they already were. I suppose, in a way, you could say that you destroyed their worlds… Or rather, their way of looking at the world, and showing them the path to a newer, better one. Because, ultimately… Isn't that all destruction is, really? Change, or the tool to create change? Whether it's change for the better or the worst, I think, depends on who you ask. And while I'm sure a lot of people would say that the change you've created so far as been bad… Many more would disagree."

"… Destruction… As a tool for change…" Blaze whispered, stunned by the very idea.

"You told me, once, that you had a dream. A world you envisioned, but weren't sure could ever be a reality," Cosmo said gently. "Wouldn't you like the chance to make that dream come true?"

Blaze stared at her friend, dazed, struggling to find the words to express what she was feeling… Probably because she wasn't sure WHAT she was feeling.

"There is, of course, another reason why I think that you absolutely MUST be the next ruler of Solana," Cosmo continued, her expression souring. "While everyone is united and friendly of each other now… Once all this is over, and they remember that they used to hate each other, that might not be the case. If you were to take the throne, you would serve as a reminder of their newfound unity and purpose, and ensure that they don't revert to old habits and try to resume the status quo. After all, you're the one person just about everyone trusts. If they can count on anyone to keep them on the right path, it's you."

"That's… A rather large burden to bear," Blaze said weakly.

"Being the ruler of anything always is," Cosmo said wearily. "And of course, there is… One more reason…"

"What?" Blaze asked, dreading the answer.

"As you may recall, for all the problems Solana has or had, we're STILL one of the better places to live in the world," Cosmo reminded her friend. "A lot of other places are… Much worse off. There are tyrants who literally eat babies and devour the tortured souls of over 1000 subjects a day. Governments who use dark magic and mass brainwashing to turn their populace into mindless puppets with zero free will of their own. Rulers whose hobbies and depravities are so vile and debased that even the most twisted of Drow or High Elves would be repulsed. Empires that build palaces on the backs of the oppressed and downtrodden, and that isn't even remotely hyperbole. Many of these nations are right on our borders, and have coveted our land for generations. At least part of the reason my father did what he did is out of fear of those other countries. Even when Solana is freed from his madness, we will still be at risk from those evil nations. We are going to need a strong leader to keep us united and capable of defending ourselves when those other nations eventually make their move, and who better for that task…"

"Than a world-ending demon…" Blaze murmured.

"Precisely," Cosmo said.

Blaze was silent for several minutes. "That's… A lot to lay on a person in one sitting," she said finally.

Cosmo gave her a sad smile. "I wouldn't have asked you if I didn't think you were capable of the task… Or if there were anyone, anyone at all that I felt could do the task as well as you. I know how much you value your freedom, and that asking you to do this would be effectively putting you in another cage… However, the choice, ultimately, is yours. If you refuse, we will try another way."

"No," Blaze said quietly. "There is no choice. Not really. I promised you when this all started out that I would always be there to protect you and your people… To turn down this request would be going back on my word, and that is something I simply cannot do."

"You can still keep your promise without becoming the next Queen," Cosmo assured her.

Blaze shook her head. "Perhaps so, but I doubt I would be able to do it as well. No, your arguments have convinced me, Cosmo. Even if it may cost me my hard-earned freedom, I cannot turn my back on so many people who depend on me… And I suppose, deep down, a part of me relishes being a mighty ruler, revered and obeyed by all. I guess that's the demon in me." She chuckled wryly. "And demon or not, I suppose you could still do worse for a new monarch than I."

"We certainly couldn't do better," Cosmo said fondly.

Blaze took a deep breath. "So… I'm going to become Queen. How do we do this?"

"Well, there'll be a formal announcement, of course, and some other ceremonial matters to attend to… But most of those can wait. Right now, what you need to do are sign these," Cosmo said, handing Blaze the papers she been working on.

"What are these?" Blaze asked, glancing at the documents. They were thick in legalese.

"Papers to legitimize your adoption into the Royal family, cementing your place as next in line to the throne, and a certificate or two to state for the record that I am handing over my crown to you of my own volition and that you are my chosen successor," Cosmo explained. "All that you need to do are sign them," she said, holding out a feathered pen.

Blaze took the pen, looked at the documents… And hesitated. "What's wrong?" Cosmo asked in concern. "There aren't any loopholes or hidden causes which will bite you in the ass, if that's what you're worried about."

"No, it's not that, I know can trust you," Blaze said quickly. "It's just… This isn't a decision that only I can make. There's somebody else I need to talk to first."

It took Cosmo but a moment to realize what her friend was talking about. "I'm sure Honey will say yes. She should be thrilled to be a princess, and get to live in a palace."

"I'm sure she would, and the dragons wouldn't have a problem with it either," Blaze agreed. "But I don't think that I should make a decision of this magnitude without talking to her about it first."

Cosmo nodded in understanding. "I understand. You want to wait until morning, then?"

Blaze shook her head. "No, I'll go wake her up now. I hate to do it, but this is isn't something I should wait on. I'll just tell her the story of how I castrated Cetus afterwards if she's having trouble going back to bed, that always puts to sleep pretty fast."

"You really love her, don't you?" Cosmo said gently as Blaze stood up. "As if she really were your daughter."

"She IS my daughter," Blaze said firmly. "In every way that matters." She hesitated, a thought occurring to her. "Do we need to draft some forms for her too? To formalize her adoption?"

Cosmo chuckled and handed Blaze a few more papers. "You didn't think I'd forgotten about her, did you?"

Blaze smiled gratefully. "You really are a true friend, you know that?"

Cosmo giggled. "Well, soon enough, we'll be MORE than friends."

Blaze gave her a blank look. "It's things like that that make people think we're gay for each other, you know that, right?"

Cosmo snorted. "Go wake up your daughter already."

Blaze chuckled and turned away. "Sure thing… _Mother_."

"Mother?! I'm going to be your sister, not your mother!" Cosmo said indignantly. "Honestly, I'm too young to be a mom!"

"And I'm not?" Blaze asked sardonically.

"Which of us is several billion years old again?" Cosmo retorted. "If anything, you're old enough to be MY mother!"

Blaze laughed. "Ha! In that case, maybe I should be the one doing the adoption here!"

"Oh, don't you even start!" Cosmo snapped good-naturedly.

"Oh, very well," Blaze said with faux weariness, rolling her eyes. She started to leave the tent… Only to pause again. "Cosmo," she said after some thought. "Do you suppose that these other nations which you're so worried about could stand to lose a little… Deadwood, as well?"

Cosmo blinked in surprise, then smiled. "You know… I do believe that they might…" She admitted, a slow smile forming.

"Something to think about, then," Blaze said, an enigmatic smile on her face as she left the tent to see her daughter.

…

"Needless to say, when I woke Honey up – and she stopped yelling at me for interrupting her beauty sleep – she was absolutely delighted to hear that I was to become Queen, and she and her Dragon 'siblings' royalty as well," Blaze continued. "So I signed the forms, became Cosmo's sister, and legally eligible to inherit the throne."

"And given those comments you were making to Cosmo about deadwood, I'm assuming that's also when you began formulating thoughts of global domination?" Espio inquired.

"It was," Blaze agreed.

"Well, I suppose there are worse reasons to decide to take over the world," Vector admitted.

"And it's an interesting way to interpret your role as a destroyer," Rouge said, intrigued. "I think more ancient world-ending entities should consider that perspective."

"I-WON'T," Omega grunted. "I-JUST-LIKE-KILLING-THINGS. THAT'S-NOT-GOING-TO-CHANGE. I-FIND-MYSELF-RATHER-DISENCHANTED-WITH-YOU-NOW, BLAZE. YOU-DISGRACE-ALL-WHO-WORSHIP-DESTRUCTION!"

"I'm so sorry to hear that," Blaze said deadpan.

"YOU-SHOULD-BE!" Omega snapped.

"… All those people… They really looked up to you that much?" Amy asked, an odd look on her face.

"They still do," Blaze said finally. "And I do my best everyday to make sure their trust in me was not in vain."

"…Hrmm…" Amy murmured.

"Starting to change your mind about her, Amy?" Sonic asked hopefully.

"What, really? Ha! As if I'd EVER forgive her for stealing you from me, Sonic!" Amy snarled.

Sonic sighed. "Why am I even surprised…"

"It was clear to me that you and Miss Cosmo must really love each other… That's so sweet!" Cream gushed. "I wish I had a sister…"

"I thought you said I was like your sister!" Amy protested.

"Oh yeah," Cream said, not looking too enthused about that.

"The next day, we prepared for the final battle," Blaze continued. "As we mustered the troops for the last push on Dark Oak's Castle, I gave the troops a few words to raise their morale and spirit for the last fight. Historians would later write of the passionate battlefield speech I made that day, of how I waxed eloquent on the virtues of the people of Solana, the nobility of their spirit and the evils of Helheim and those who drew upon its power. They would write of my impassioned plea for noble battle under the recognized rules of civilized warfare, to remember that they were liberating the peoples of Solana and do all in their power to avoid bringing harm to them."

…

"LET'S KILL THE BASTARDS!" Blaze roared. The thousands of soldiers arrayed before her raised their weapons and howled ecstatically.

…

"As they often do, the historians lied," Blaze said with a grin.

"Yeah, they do that," Rouge, who'd been around long enough to notice, agreed.

"It can get rather annoying," Shadow grunted.

"I-TAKE-BACK-SOME-OF-THE-THINGS-I-SAID-BEFORE," Omega said grudgingly. "THAT-WAS-A-GOOD-SPEECH."

"Short and to the point," Mighty agreed.

"I think I would've preferred the other version," Cream complained.

"When you meet my daughter, I'll ask her to recite it to you. She does the best dramatic reading of it, and has even managed to learn how to keep a straight face throughout," Blaze said with a smirk.

"I'd like to meet her," Cream said.

"I'm fairly certain the feeling is mutual," Blaze said warmly. "The battle was very fierce, with a great deal of casualties on both sides. The Inves were able to constantly reinforce themselves by opening more cracks to Helheim, but I could keep summoning a seemingly infinite number of demons to match their numbers, and in addition, the phoenixes and undead were pretty much immortal so just kept getting back up for more no matter how many times they were knocked down. With Cosmo in tow, I managed to fight my way to the Castle gates and forced my way inside. I faced many trials within, made more difficult by the fact that I had someone to protect."

"Did you have to fight clones of past bosses? I think you mentioned that before," Charmy asked.

Blaze nodded. "I did. I defeated them pretty much the same way I did before, using the environment to my advantage whenever necessary because, for whatever reason, the chambers I fought them in were perfect recreations of where I battled them the first time around."

"Why do they do that?" Knuckles complained. "Wouldn't the smart thing be to shake things up a bit by giving them different rooms so you can't take advantage of whatever architectural or environmental weaknesses used against them the first time around, or maybe change up their fighting routine so you can't use the same tricks that beat them the first time?"

"A better question might be why bother making clones of previous bosses at all," Espio commented. "After all, if they weren't able to stop you before, why would they this time?"

"Well, they might not be SUPPOSED to kill you so much as wear you out so you'll have trouble facing the final boss," Tails suggested. "After all, the first time around you usually get to take a nice long rest after defeating a boss. But this time, you have to fight them one after the other, with either little or no breaks in between. As such, it's much less likely you'll be able to fight the Big Bad in peak condition after an ordeal like that."

"… That… Actually makes an odd amount of sense," Shadow admitted, impressed.

"Well, what would you expect from my little pal?" Sonic said proudly, clapping the Fox on the shoulder.

"I-DON'T-REALLY-CARE-WHAT-RATIONALE-THERE-ARE-BEHIND-BOSS-RUSHES," Omega commented. "I-ENJOYED-KILLING-THEM-ONCE, NOW-I-GET-TO-KILL-THEM-A-SECOND-TIME."

"I wish we didn't have to kill them at all the first time," Cream said sadly. "Even if they usually ARE just robots."

"WHAT'S-THAT-SUPPOSED-TO-MEAN?" Omega asked threateningly.

"O-oh! I didn't mean… Not robots like YOU, Mr. Omega, but… You know, my father's vehicles," Cream corrected quickly.

"ACCEPTABLE," Omega said grudgingly.

"Was it really a good idea for you to bring Cosmo all that way?" Amy complained. "I mean, it sounds like she wasn't that much help."

"Freaking escort missions," Vector grumbled.

"I admit it wasn't perhaps the safest thing to bring her, especially with her atrocious lack of combat skills, but… This was important to her. I could not in good faith leave her behind," Blaze said.

"And besides, it's not like we haven't taken sometimes irritating helpless people with us on adventures before," Tails pointed out.

Shadow nodded. "Yes, we still let the Chaotix hang out with us for some reason."

"HEY!" Vector shouted.

"Nice one," Mighty said approvingly.

"After conquering every trial and challenging puzzle the fortress could throw at us, we at last reached the throne room and the final showdown…" Blaze continued.

…

In the heart of the Castle sat a dark chamber, lit only by a pair of massive braziers flanking either side of a dais, upon which sat a tall throne made of interwoven vines with alien flowers and fruits blossoming from the sides. Similar plant life covered the walls and ceiling and crept across the floor, covering up most of what had once been a beautifully ornate chamber and leaving it a dark, overgrown crypt. Some tattered banners depicting what looked like the sun, plants, and 7 jewels hung here and there from the walls, although most of them had been shredded by the plant life growing everywhere. There was also a stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling, but it was hard to see due to being mostly covered in vines.

Seated in the throne was a towering figure, at least 2 meters tall, clad in sharp-edged armor of varying shades of purple, a large green orb set in his chest with an emblem of what appeared to be several different fruits – a melon, watermelon, and orange, some grapes, some strawberries, and some bananas chief among them – embossed in it. Two halves of a tattered black cape hung down from his shoulders, and a long golden sword sat in his lap. His helmet covered his entire head, a small green orb covering his face with a pair of long edged crests jutting out of the sides like a giant V. He stared patiently at the pair of massive double doors on the other side of the room, waiting.

Without warning, the doors were blasted off their hinges by a great explosion, flames roaring into the room and burning away the alien growth closest to it, leaving scorched stone and ashes in its wake. Seemingly unfazed, the armored figure calmly said, "The door was unlocked, you know. You didn't need to do that."

"Perhaps not," Blaze the Cat said as she strode into the room, flames burning around her fists and feet, eyes gleaming. "But it felt good."

The seated figure chuckled. "I suppose I should expect nothing less from the self-proclaimed Destroyer of Worlds… Well met, Blaze the Cat. A pleasure to meet you at long last. I am, of course, Dark Oak… And you have been a thorn in my side for a very, very long time."

"I'd expect that to be something you're used to, considering that chair you're in," Blaze quipped.

"It's actually a lot more comfortable than it looks… But I can see you did not come alone, did you?" Dark Oak observed.

"No, she did not," Cosmo said, stepping into the room. Although she stood strong and defiant, there was a look of fear in her eyes, and she quickly moved to be close behind Blaze. "It's been a long time, Father."

"That it has, daughter," Dark Oak said, nodding to her. "You're looking well. I'm gratified that your journey has not proven too taxing for you. You always were rather a fragile blossom, weren't you? Not like your sister-"

"Don't you dare talk about Galaxina!" Cosmo snapped, eyes flashing. "You don't have that right! Not after what you did to her!"

That actually seem to give the fearsome overlord pause for moment. "What happened to your sister was… An accident. My control over the Inves was not yet complete. I never intended to hurt her-"

"And what about what you did to Mother? To everyone in the Castle? To everyone in Solana?!" Cosmo demanded, furious. "Was that an accident, too?!"

"… No," Dark Oak admitted with a shrug. "I knew exactly what I was doing with all that."

Cosmo's shoulders slumped at that, her face going bleak. "Why, Father? Please… I don't understand. Why would you do all this?" She pleaded. "What you did to Mother… To Galaxina… To the realm… None of it matches up with the wonderful father, the wonderful King, I always remembered you to be. Please… Tell me there is an explanation. An excuse. Is the power of Helheim too much for you to control? Were you brainwashed? Coerced? Threatened? Something… ANYTHING that can justify the atrocities you've committed?"

Dark Oak bowed his head. "I have a justification for my actions… But I doubt that it is one you would accept. I'm afraid, my dearest daughter, that everything I've done… I've done of my own volition."

Cosmo staggered back at that, but bravely tried to rally, a look of desperate defiance on her face. "No… No, no, NO! I won't believe that! I REFUSE to believe that! He… He did something to you, I know he did!"

Blaze glanced at her friend in confusion. "'He?'"

"I do believe the young lady is referring to _me_ ," a sinister voice oozed from the shadows. With a loud whirring noise, a yellow and red egg-shaped hovering craft with a hemispherical underside, rockets on the back, a small circular lamp on the front, and a small windshield above it floated into view. Seated in the cockpit of the contraption was a rotund egg-shaped human with a long red nose, a big white bushy mustache, pointy blue sunglasses, visor-shaped goggles perched atop his completely bald head, a black and yellow coat, and a red bodysuit with yellow and black-striped boots. "Hello, Miss Blaze. Allow me to introduce myself… I am His Majesty Dark Oak's Grand Vizier, Dr. Eggman Nega! It's a pleasure to meet you at long last…hee hee hee hee!"

…

"WHAT?!" Just about everyone shouted in disbelief.

"Eggman Nega?!" Cried a startled Knuckles. "What… What was HE doing there?!"

"That… Is something I would very much like to know as well," said a stunned Silver.

"Well, it could be worse! It could be Jafar," Charmy said with a shudder.

"Huh, I'd honestly forgotten about the vizier thing," Cream commented.

"Well, isn't this an interesting turn of events," said an impressed Rouge.

"Wait… But this makes no sense!" Mighty protested. "This happened like, thousands of years ago, right? How could Eggman Nega possibly exist back then, given that he's Blaze's nemesis now… And Silver's in the future… Assuming they're the same person. Which they might not be. Since that's never been made 100% clear."

"Well, the Nega from Silver's time hates our Eggman and wants nothing to do with him, while the Nega from Blaze's world has teamed up with him before," Shadow pointed out. "Which would seem to indicate that the two are unrelated somehow."

"You know, despite looking and sounding exactly alike and having the same name," Vector snarked.

"Well, this is other dimensions we're talking about. We already know that it's quite likely that there are parallels of us in multiple different realities," Espio reminded the crocodile.

"On the other hand, given that the Nega from Silver's time has access to time travel, it's perfectly feasible that the Nega from Blaze's world COULD be the same Nega Silver knows, but from a different point in his personal timeline," Tails argued. "Though from his past or his future, only he knows for certain. We'd have to ask him to know for sure."

"And he isn't really the kind of guy who'd simply tell us for certain if asked," Sonic complained.

"Of course," Espio grunted.

"I suppose it also explains how he could exist back then as well as still be Blaze's biggest enemy in the present day," Shadow mused. "He could simply jump from time to time whenever he's beaten instead of having to take the slow path like she does."

"While it wouldn't surprise me if my Eggman Nega does have access to time travel, there is another reason for how he's been able to pester me throughout the ages… But we haven't gotten to that point yet," Blaze explained.

"So… Does that mean Eggman Nega was the actual villain and Dark Oak was just his pawn?" Cream inquired.

"Yeah, wouldn't be the first time we've dealt with something like that," Amy agreed.

Blaze sighed. "If only it were that easy…"

…

" _You_ ," Cosmo snarled, her face twisted into a mask of hatred. Blaze was startled; she couldn't remember ever seeing such an expression on her friend's face before. "This is all your fault… None of this would've happened if you hadn't come here! All those people wouldn't have suffered, my mother and sister wouldn't have died, my father wouldn't have become the monster he is… None of this would have happened if it weren't for you!"

Eggman Nega chuckled. "How charming, Princess! Despite everything you've seen in your months of travel, you still persist in believing that all the evils in the world can be laid squarely on the shoulders of a few select individuals, when the reality is anything but. While I would love to be able to take credit for everything that has happened, I simply can't, because it wouldn't be true."

"What are you talking about?!" Cosmo demanded furiously.

"I freely admit, Princess, that I came to your kingdom with the express intent of deceiving, corrupting, and betraying your father so that I could gain access to the fabled Seeds of Helheim and all the other goodies you have stowed in your Royal vaults-" Nega began.

Cosmo gasped. "You see, father?! He's not even denying it!"

"Nor is he saying anything I'm not already aware of," Dark Oak said wearily.

Cosmo started. "Wh-what?!"

"Let him finish, daughter," the overlord intoned.

"Thank you, Excellency," Nega said with a small bow. "As I was saying… That WAS what I was playing to do, but… Imagine my surprise when I discovered he was _already considering using the seeds_! I must say, it certainly made my job a lot easier. All I had to do was give him a little push, and, well… The results speak for themselves, don't they?"

Cosmo gasped. "N-no… That… That can't be! Father, please… Say it's not so!"

"Unfortunately, daughter… It's true. All of it is true," Dark Oak growled. "I had been contemplating using the Seeds of Helheim for quite a while, but never worked up the courage to actually do so because I feared what the consequences might be for my realm and my people. The news Eggman Nega brought me, however, convinced me that I had no other choice but to use the Seeds, lest our great nation of Solana face a terrible fate."

"Lest we… Solana has ALREADY suffered a terrible fate!" Cosmo cried in disbelief. "A fate that YOU brought upon it, Father!"

"I have indeed," Dark Oak agreed. "But even so, it is still a far, far better fate, I think, than what might've happened if I had done nothing." He shrugged. "Or at least, that is what I tell myself to justify my actions, anyway."

"I don't… Don't understand…" Cosmo whispered, incredulous. "What could possibly convince you to do such an awful thing to your kingdom, your people, your FAMILY?!"

Blaze frowned, narrowing her eyes in thought. "Cosmo, weren't you just telling me last night that there were a great deal of nations out there who envied your kingdom's prosperity, wanted it for themselves, and were ruled by people even WORSE than your father?"

"Yes, but what does that-" Cosmo hesitated, eyes going wide. "Oh."

"Oh indeed," Dark Oak said. "I had known that our neighbors, even those who claim to be our allies, have been plotting to destroy us for quite some time. Eggman Nega brought me proof that an attack against us was imminent, and it would be one we would not be able to survive without taking… Desperate measures."

"Truly desperate indeed, if you were convinced that the only way to protect your country was to conquer and destroy it yourself," Blaze observed.

"That's insane!" Cosmo protested incredulously. "How could you possibly think something like that would be a good idea?! Couldn't you have done, I don't know, something NOT CRAZY like rallying the troops, calling up everyone in the kingdom to help-"

Dark Oak burst into bitter laughter. "Like you called up everyone in the kingdom to help you fight me?"

"Yes! Exactly like that!" Cosmo insisted, not noticing Blaze wincing.

Dark Oak nodded. "Tell me, daughter. Did all your new friends and allies come the instant you asked them to, dropping everything, putting long-standing grudges and rivalries aside for the greater good… Or were they too busy dealing with problems of their own or so full of themselves that they wouldn't lift a finger to help you unless you took care of things they couldn't be bothered to first or outright FORCED them to?"

Cosmo faltered at that. "W-well…I…that is to say-"

"Please give me more credit than that, daughter. I'm not an idiot," Dark Oak sneered. "Of COURSE I tried asking everyone for help! And what do you think happened?" He shrugged in frustration. "Most of them said they'd love to help, but they were busy with something else and would show up as soon as they could. As if their problems could possibly be as massive as what our neighboring countries would do to them if they successfully invaded! Others pledged their support, but made efforts to get as far away as possible should things go south, assuming I'd be too stupid to notice. Others still just said no. They said no to ME! Their sovereign!"

He clenched his fist, and the plant growth around the room started twitching and shaking. Blaze tensed up, anticipating a fight… But after a moment, Dark Oak sagged, and the foliage stilled. "And of course, there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. As I'm sure you've noticed by now, daughter, our rule is a joke. We may have once been strong enough to truly govern this nation, but in the present day we rule in name only over a divided land of fiefdoms and city-states. Pretty much everyone was free to do whatever the hell they wanted, even ignore my governance if they didn't want to. And if I attempted to back up my word with force, I would quickly find myself overthrown, for our personal armies were no longer as strong or as loyal as they once were. And if I was unable to command the people of my own country, what hope did I have of ever being able to defeat those who sought to destroy us?"

"So… What, all this, everything you've done, was basically you conquering your own country to prepare for an even greater threat?" Blaze concluded.

Dark Oak nodded. "Essentially, yes."

"… And you couldn't have done that WITHOUT unleashing the power and horrors of an interdimensional world-eating forest upon your own people?!" The cat asked in disbelief.

Dark Oak laughed. "As preposterous as this might sound, Blaze, the Seeds of Helheim are actually the LEAST dangerous forbidden weapon in the Royal vaults. We have things down there that can rip this world in half, unleash the legions of hell, destroy the entire universe, or even make it so that the world never existed! Compared to my other choices, the Seeds seemed like the best option!"

"A weapon that required the sacrifice of your wife and needless and horrific suffering on the scale of tens of thousands, up to and including turning your own populace into monsters, was the best option?!" Blaze asked in disbelief.

"Compared to the others? Yes," Dark Oak said flatly.

"But what about the Sol Emeralds?" Cosmo asked.

Dark Oak snorted. "Those glittering baubles? They were the _first_ thing I tried after it became clear I couldn't convince the rest of the nation through diplomacy…they wouldn't respond to me. They deemed me unworthy of their power. Oh yes, it didn't matter that I needed it to save everyone in Solana, and that without it everyone would suffer a horrible fate, they wouldn't let me use them because I didn't meet their impossibly high standards! Where did they get off?!"

"Artifacts like that can be _so_ tricky," Nega said with faux sadness. "The Seeds of Helheim, in contrast, were far less…shall we say, _discerning?"_

"If you were seriously considering resorting to the Seeds as a Plan B, maybe the Emeralds were right to reject you," Cosmo snarled.

"Oh yes, they were perfectly right to condemn me...and everyone else in this country as well. Such fine, outstanding exemplars of virtue they are, happy to look down on me for wanting to do _anything_ to protect my kingdom, no matter how unethical, regardless of how many people got hurt because they had to take the high ground," Dark Oak sneered. "Anyway, I will not demean myself by saying that I weep for my people, but I assure you that my sleep is far from restful. And as awful as it might sound, if I had a chance to do this all over… I believe I would still make the same decision, because the things I've done are still far more merciful than what our enemies have planned. Yes, including using my people to grow plants or turning them into Inves, especially because that was never meant to be permanent!"

"What do you mean?" Blaze asked in confusion.

"My daughter has told you much about the lore and terror of Helheim, I'm sure. Has she ever told you about Overlord Inves?" Dark Oak asked.

Cosmo gasped in surprise. "No, she hasn't," Blaze asked, glancing at her friend in puzzlement.

"Overlords… Those are real?!" Cosmo asked in disbelief.

Dark Oak nodded. "Very real. After all, depending on who you ask, our people were descended from some… And depending on how you look at it, you might say that I, and the Four Heavenly Generals, are turning into them."

"Can somebody please explain to me what you're talking about?" Asked the confused Blaze.

…

"I second that notion," Espio spoke up.

"Yeah, what are Overlords?" Amy agreed.

Vector scoffed. "How can you not know what overlords are? We've been fighting them for years!"

Amy rolled her eyes. "I meant Overlord _Inves_ , not general overlords."

"… I knew that!" The crocodile insisted.

"I don't believe you!" Knuckles yelled.

"I believe I know what Cosmo's talking about," Rouge said, looking concerned. "So, they _do_ exist… Interesting…"

"Anyone feel like filling us in?" Mighty snarked.

"Things should be clear momentarily," Blaze promised.

…

"As you well know, Miss Blaze, when a creature or person eats a Helheim fruit, they are transformed into a mindless monster called an Inves," Eggman Nega lectured the cat. "However, in the right circumstances – usually due to the power of the Golden Fruit, an especially strong will, or certain other factors – it is possible for someone to instead be transformed into an 'Overlord' Inves, gaining all the powers of an Inves – more, even! – While retaining their original intellect and personality. Overlord Inves have the power to open dimensional cracks at will, control Helheim plants, and command lesser Inves. Sometimes when Helheim consumes a world, a select number of their former population is able to survive as Overlords, ruling over what's left of the world they once knew. While I suppose you might call them the 'rulers' of Helheim, they don't really do much – not like they have much to do, really – and are ultimately subservient to the will of the forest itself, though it's gracious enough to let them live there and use its power. Rather conscientious of it, given that it was the one responsible for destroying their home in the first place."

"You and the Generals were able to control Helheim plants and Inves… Does that mean that you are Overlords?" Blaze inquired, starting to put the pieces together.

"We are _becoming_ Overlords, yes," Dark Oak conceded. "Myself due to initiating the process of growing the Golden Fruit and returning Helheim to our world, the others as a result of Eggman Nega and Black Narcissus using a combination of science and alchemy to create a way for us to harness the forest's power without being overwhelmed. Our fancy armor isn't just for show, you see."

"It didn't seem to work so well in Black Narcissus' case," Blaze pointed out.

Eggman Nega shrugged. "I warned him that fruit was still in its testing phases and might be dangerous. The fact that you forced him to resort to it speaks volumes for your skill and threat level, Miss Blaze… And the fact that he was able to retain some degree of himself after his transformation indicates that the modifications I made to his armor and his genetic structure held up, and bode well for our future plans."

"What are you talking about?" Cosmo demanded.

"Despite the atrocities I've committed against my own subjects… Despite being spurned and mocked by so many of those who should rightfully be my vassals and come at my call… I bear the people of Solana no ill will. All the awful, terrible, unforgivable things I've done to them are not without purpose," Dark Oak explained. "And that includes putting them into trees."

Cosmo frowned. "What do you-"

Nega chuckled. "My dear," the mad scientist said smoothly. "What would you say if I told you that those trees and other plants that we've been putting people into weren't to drain their life force or blood or whatever to fuel our nefarious plans… But because they were _chrysalises_?"

"Chrys-" Cosmo gasped in horror. "No! You mean-"

"You… You were transforming them into Overlord Inves!" Blaze gasped.

Nega cackled. "Correct! While being infected by an Inves or eating a Helheim fruit can cause a person to transform into an Inves in a matter of hours if not days, the experiments I have conducted with Black Narcissus indicated that gradual exposure to Helheim venom can, over time, allow a test subject to build up an immunity of sorts so that when they finally transform into an Inves, they will retain their sanity and so avoid becoming a mindless beast. Those trees and other plants that you've seen growing into and around people in the areas we've infected weren't simply draining people of their energy and fluids, but pumping diluted Helheim venom into them to eventually transform them into Overlords! Brilliant, if I do say so myself!" He pouted. "Except that none of them ever got that chance due to you going out of your way to murder them whenever you run into them. Really, and you call _us_ monsters?"

…

"Wait, so that's why…" Whispered the shocked Espio.

"Then all those plants things were just some kind of transformative cocoon?! That's messed up!" Vector protested.

"Yeah, really, did they have to make it such a gross and disturbing-looking process?" Asked a disgusted Charmy.

"Things like that tend to be more often than not, in my experience," Shadow said.

"… Oh yeah, the Black Arms, right," Amy recalled. "Say, Shadow, can they transform people into creatures like themselves?"

"It's not beyond their ability," Shadow confirmed. "But they're more interested in eating the populations of inhabited planets than converting them into more of themselves."

"But they won't do that anymore now that you're in charge of them, right?" Cream asked anxiously.

"Don't worry, sweetie, the Black Arms won't hurt anyone ever again," Shadow promised. "In fact, would you like to come visit them sometime? I'm sure my brother would love to meet you."

"He would?" Rouge asked skeptically.

"He will if I tell him to," Shadow growled.

"I'll… Consider it. Thank you, Grunkle Shadow," Cream said.

"Does that mean they're going to try to turn her into Black Cream or something? Should she be worried about getting a third eye?" Mighty joked.

"I don't want a third eye!" Cream cried in horror.

"It's not really that bad, sweetie…and Mighty, Black Cream is a stupid name!" Shadow snapped.

"And Black Shadow isn't?" the armadillo snarked.

"It sounds menacing, dammit!" the black hedgehog retorted.

"Why did Dark Oak and Eggman Nega want to turn people into Overlord Inves anyway?" Knuckles asked.

"We're getting there," Blaze said.

…

"I'm fairly certain that, had they known what would ultimately happen to them and been capable of asking, they would have still wanted me to end their suffering anyway in any way that I could," Blaze snarled furiously as Cosmo reeled in horror.

"Is that so?" Nega sneered. "Well, then, I suppose it's a good thing that you didn't leave any of them alive long enough to know for sure, so as not to burden your conscience with any more guilt, isn't it?"

"But… I don't understand… Why are you turning them all into Overlord Inves?!" Cosmo demanded.

"A King cannot rule over a country consisting of nothing but brainless drones and still call himself a King," Dark Oak explained. "A ruler is nothing without the people supporting him. By turning everyone into Overlord Inves, I shall erase the divides caused by their different species and cultures and make them all of one race. And no, not even the Seedrians shall be spared, for I'm not arrogant enough to believe us to be the perfect people, for we are just as flawed as all the rest. Once all are one, the pointless enmities and feuds and biases which have kept them apart for so long shall be eradicated, and Solana shall once again be a single nation, united and strong and capable of handling everything the future throws at it…

"And that is just the beginning! Once I have obtained the godlike power of the Golden Fruit, I will use it to reshape the world as I see fit. The nations that threaten Solana shall do so no longer, for they shall be incorporated into my new Empire. All the evil tyrants and despots who so cruelly treat their people as worse than slaves shall be overthrown, and the world united under my rule. And everyone whom has become an Inves – which, by that point, will be just about everyone in the world – will be ascended to an Overlord, transcending their monstrous natures and regaining the personalities, the _souls_ they once possessed. It will be an end to all wars and suffering. All people shall be as one. There shall, at last… Be peace…"

"Father…" Cosmo whispered, stunned.

…

"So THAT'S what he's after!" Vector declared.

"How despicable…" Espio murmured.

"The world peace sounds nice. Turning everyone into an Inves doesn't," Cream agreed.

"You know, there are times when I honestly have trouble telling who's worse: the villains who are willing to do awful things just because they're evil, or the ones who do it because they think it's the right thing to do," Rouge said in disgust.

"But what's Nega get out of this?" Silver wondered.

"I wondered the exact same thing," Blaze said.

…

"And what, pray tell, do you get out of this, Mr. Eggman Nega?" Blaze asked in disgust, glancing at the scientist suspiciously. "Somehow I doubt your intentions are quite as…'altruistic' as your 'partner.'"

"Oh, not even remotely," Nega said cheerfully. "I have my own reasons for desiring the power of Helheim… Very selfish ones at that. I also desire a few, ah, trinkets from the vaults once this is all taken care of, and Dark Oak has given me permission to take whatever I want after he's conquered the world…within reason. I've also been promised a nation of my own to rule, with a sample population made up of specimens from every species on this planet so as to preserve a few from being turned into Inves. It's always important to have a 'control' in any experiment, after all!"

…

"Well, that sounds freaking disturbing," Mighty commented.

"I wonder who'd have it worse, the people who were turned into Inves… Or the ones forced to live under Nega…" Shadow wondered.

"Thankfully, that never came to pass," Blaze said.

…

Blaze raised an eyebrow at Dark Oak. "And you really think he'll be satisfied with just one country?"

"Oh, not in the slightest," Dark Oak said. "I'm aware he's using me, but I in turn am using him. I know there's a good chance he might try to betray me once all is said and done. Rest assured, I've taken certain precautions in case such an eventuality occurs."

"Just as I have taken certain precautions in case he betrays me," Nega said cheerfully. "Mutually assured destruction, and all that. Of course, it's yet to be seen which of those measures would actually work… It often goes down to who has the courage to take the first shot, after all…"

"Father…so…this is…this is the reason? This is why you've done all this?" Cosmo whispered, looking broken and lost.

"It is indeed, daughter," Dark Oak said softly.

"And…and if I asked you to stop…you wouldn't, would you?" she asked quietly.

"No," Dark Oak said with a hint of regret. "I would not. Especially not now, not when I am so close to grasping the Golden Fruit in my own hands… Not when the final component for my ascendancy has just walked through my front door…"

Blaze instantly positioned herself in front of Cosmo. "Whatever you're going to do with her, you will have to go through me first!" She snarled.

"With her?" Dark Oak said, surprised. "What do you-" He paused, then burst into laughter. "Oh! Oh, I see. You really don't get it, do you?"

"Get what?" Asked the confused Blaze.

"It is not my daughter whom I require to achieve my goals… Is you, Blaze the Cat!" Dark Oak declared.

"Wh-what?!" A startled Blaze stammered.

…

"I second that notion," Espio spoke up.

"Yeah, I assumed that Cosmo was going to be the key to his plans or something," Vector agreed. "I mean, that's how it usually goes, right?"

"Yeah, plus it'd explain why Red Pine seemed so dead-set on capturing her before," Amy agreed.

"But if it wasn't Cosmo he wanted, why did he need you, Blaze?" Cream wondered.

"I think I may have an idea…" Rouge murmured, an odd gleam in her eye.

…

"What are you talking about?" Cosmo demanded.

"A Golden Fruit, like all plants, requires the right environment and nutrients to grow," Eggman Nega lectured. "It must be planted in the right soil – a Woman of Beginning, in this case Queen Earthia – and fed a healthy dose of _conflict_."

"Whenever Helheim invades a world, it selects champions who must battle each other for the right to claim the Fruit," Dark Oak explained. "However, since we were attempting to artificially grow a Fruit, we had no way of designating champions – nor did we truly want to, for creating opponents for myself would significantly reduce my chances of winning the Fruit – so hoped that my conquering Solana would count as the necessary 'victory' that would allow me to claim the Fruit and its power."

"Unfortunately, we were wrong," Nega grunted in irritation. "No matter how much suffering and torment we caused, no matter how much negative energy we fed into this damn tree, it didn't show a single sign of bearing fruit. It quickly became clear that a Golden Fruit can't simply be grown and plucked from a tree like your common apple, it must be _earned_. And unfortunately, the people of Solana were either too weak or too self-absorbed with their own problems to rise up and face His Excellency and provide the adversary we needed."

"And then my daughter found you, Blaze… And you fought and defeated Red Pine in battle," Dark Oak went on. "The reaction was immediate. At last, my tree began to bear fruit. The Golden Fruit started forming within my dear wife. Your arrival in Solana at last provided me with a rival, a worthy opponent whom I could pit myself against to prove my strength and claim the Golden Fruit. As you traveled across the land and I threw minion after minion at you, the Fruit steadily grew in power and potency with every battle and victory you claimed, and now that you have brought an army to my doorstep, conquering everything that stood before you, it has at last nearly finished ripening. It is already waiting, at the apex of this great tree, for one of us to triumph over the other and prove that they have the conviction and strength necessary to dye the world in their image. All I need to do, Miss Blaze, is defeat you… And the Golden Fruit will be mine at last."

…

"So that's why!" Vector gasped.

"Yes, I thought as much," Rouge said with a nod. "I've heard of things like that before."

"You have?" Knuckles asked.

Rouge nodded. "Certainly. Many powerful acts of magic can only be performed when there is a certain balance involved. A Yin to the Yang, one might say."

"So Dark Oak actually NEEDED you to run around beating up his guys to further his plans? Seems counterproductive," Espio commented.

Sonic shrugged. "Well, it wouldn't be the first time we've been on adventure where we think we're messing up the bad guy's plans but we're actually playing right into his hands without realizing it." The others nodded in agreement.

"And yet, despite us helping them fulfill their plans, we inevitably wind up ruining them as well," Shadow commented. "You'd think they'd know by now."

"Most villains seem to have a problem with pattern recognition," Rouge commented.

"Yeah, I mean really, you'd think after getting pummeled by Sonic so often Eggman'd think to properly shield his cockpit!" Vector agreed.

"MAYBE-HE-KEEPS-MAKING-THAT SAME-MISTAKE-DUE-TO-BRAIN-DAMAGE-FROM-SONIC-SMASHING-HIM-IN-THE-FACE-SO-OFTEN?" Omega suggested.

There was a pause as they considered that. "Well, that got dark," Mighty commented.

"...Oh my," Cream whimpered. "Does…does that mean that because of Mr. Sonic, my father-"

"Blaze, let's continue, shall we?" Sonic said quickly.

"Wonderful idea, beloved," Blaze agreed.

…

Blaze's eyes widened in surprise… And then narrowed in determination. "You wouldn't be the first to think that all they need to do is beat me to achieve their goals. None have succeeded yet."

"Oh, I'm well aware of that, Blaze," Dark Oak said. "I'm not nearly as foolish or overconfident as my underlings were. I'm stronger than they all were, yes, but I'm fully aware you have the potential to be stronger still. I might be able to defeat you… But then again, I might not. Which is why, before we resort to violence, I seek to try… Another tack…"

"Another-" Blaze groaned and rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Oh no, is this is the part where you try to convince me to join you?"

"How did you guess?" Eggman Nega asked in surprise.

"Because this is about the point where the main villain _always_ tries to convince the hero to join him," Blaze said flatly.

"Well, depending on your perspective-" Dark Oak started.

"Yes, yes, from your perspective you're the hero and I'm the villain thwarting all your designs and ruining everything, heard it all before," Blaze said, bored. "What makes you think this will actually work? You know this sort of thing _never_ does in the stories, right?"

"Won't you at least hear me out?" Dark Oak asked, put out.

"No, I won't," Blaze said coldly. "I have no interest in playing any part whatsoever in the future you have in store… Even though, to an extent, I can sympathize with your reasons for creating it and admit that, on some level… I actually agree with your reasons for it."

This startled everyone in the room. "You do?" Dark Oak asked, surprised.

…

"Yeah, I second that," Vector spoke up.

"Why would you possibly agree with him?" Asked a confused Cream.

"Because she's evil all along!" Amy yelled. Nobody listened to her.

"I have good reasons. Just listen," Blaze explained.

…

"Blaze, what are you talking about?" Cosmo asked.

"Dark Oak, I have wandered the length and breadth of your land, meeting its people, befriending them and helping them to solve their problems. I have seen them at their best and at their worst, and after everything I've gone through, I've concluded… That, ultimately, you're right. They _needed_ to be conquered, if that was the only way for them to change.

"For too long, this land has been divided. Like you said, a nation in name only. The peoples of this realm cared little for what happened in the world outside their borders, so set in their ways and used to doing things the way they have been done for centuries without interference that even with the threat of imminent destruction they were incapable of banding together against a common threat until spurred into motion by an outsider, namely, me. The elves and the fairies thought they could retreat deeper into the forests, or maybe even survive in the new warped woods you would call into being. The dwarves and the Drow figured their subterranean delvings were too deep for you to reach, and that they could simply dig deeper to escape what happened on the surface. The phoenixes, in contrast, imagined themselves too high to have to worry about what happened on the surface, and were perfectly willing to destroy everything beneath them not just for their own safety, but to make things easier for themselves. The Mulanteans similarly assumed that the affairs of the surface world were none of their concern and would have no effect on them. The wendigos actually BENEFITED, especially because in all the thousands of years they've been around nobody has bothered to come up with anything like a permanent solution for them. The undead of Necropolis, for all that I like them and my daughter adores their Queen, only bothered to give a damn when Black Narcissus started working on ways for Helheim to be able to affect them. The response all of them had to the threat you posed was to either hope it would go away if they ignored or worked around you, and only started fighting in earnest when they realized they couldn't do that, and by then it was almost too late. If that was their response to you, their own king going mad, I shudder to think how they would've acted if those other nations you're so afraid of really HAD invaded!" Blaze said.

"Much the same, I imagine," Dark Oak lamented.

"I don't disagree with you," Blaze conceded. "This land has grown stagnant and begun to fall apart. The High Elves committed horrific atrocities simply because they were confident nobody could stop them. The dwarves tortured a dying old woman for millennia out of fear. The phoenixes looked down upon the people of the surface, in more ways than one, to the point where their leaders would have been perfectly happy to condemn you all and not lose any sleep over it. The Drow probably would've wiped you all out long ago if their society weren't so dysfunctional it was constantly on the brink of self-destruction. The wendigos have been such a black spot on your nation's history that the best you could do with them was wall them up and pretend they never existed. The Mulanteans and the Necropolitans were isolated and detached from the rest of the land to the point where they were barely a part of it at all, largely indifferent to what happened to everyone outside their domain. And you and the other Seedrians, who were once the mightiest in all the land, rulers of all you surveyed, reduced to shadows of your former glory, clinging to your past and the mantle of rulership and desperately hoping that nobody cared enough to challenge you for it. Considering all that, I can understand completely why you thought that the only way to snap them out of their self-indulgent state would be to conquer them and FORCE them to work together! Heck, I've more or less done the same thing. Just ask the Drow. And I'd say that most if not all them were better off thanks to my intervention, wouldn't you? Why, most of them wouldn't be here now were it not for my shaking their world up and making them look beyond themselves, sometimes by brute force!"

"That's… not exactly something I would expect a hero to say," said the surprised Dark Oak.

"That's because I'm not just a hero, I am also a destroyer," Blaze said proudly. "And I've thought long and hard recently about what exactly that means. Wildfires may be dangerous and destructive, but they also clear away deadwood and old growth to make way for something new, isn't that right, Cosmo?"

Cosmo smiled and nodded. "That's right!"

"Sometimes, the old world has to be torn down to make way for something better. It's not always a pleasant process, and there will be opposition to it, but that doesn't mean it isn't something that still needs to be done lest everything succumb to rot. I get that. Really, I do. In fact, I have a vision, a dream for a world of my own I seek to make…and it's not one that the world is capable of sustaining in its current state, if everything I've seen of it so far, and everything else I've heard, is true." Blaze grinned. "I intend to change that."

"But… Then why will you not join forces with me?" Dark Oak asked in confusion. "If you too agree that this world must be united and changed, whether it wants to or not, would it not make sense for you to ally yourself with me to achieve your dream?"

Blaze snorted. "Hardly. For one thing, while I sympathize with your motives and your reasons for doing this, I find the way you're going about it absolutely reprehensible. I only had to conquer _two_ civilizations through force to achieve the united force outside your castle, one of which practically THANKED me for it, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the other ones came to do the same eventually. In addition, the world you seek to make and the one I want are completely incompatible. You believe that it's the people of this world that are the problem, and so the only way to make it a better place is to force them to change by turning them into a completely different species."

"But they will retain their personality and memories-" Dark Oak protested.

"And will still be monsters subservient to your will," Blaze interjected. "They will have been molded and remade in your image, no longer the unique individuals they were before, and while I suppose some of them will not be missed, you're going to be changing the good along with the bad. You're basically going to be RAPING them into fitting your view of an ideal people, something I find absolutely reprehensible.… For while I agree that the peoples of this land are indeed flawed, that's not necessarily a bad thing. For all their negatives, they also have shining qualities of their own which make them worth preserving. The magic of the fairies… The elegance of the Wood Elves… The artistry of the High Elves… The courage and boisterousness of the dwarves… The pride of the dragons… The fluidity of the Mulanteans… The knowledge and piety of the phoenixes… The sheer cunning and ingenuity of the Drow… The wisdom and, yes, COMPASSION of the undead, who were able to make my daughter feel for the first time in her life like she was not alone, the only one in the world like her…" She paused to shoot a fond smile at Cosmo. "The inner strength and kindness of the Seedrians… And all the others, who have endeared themselves to me in one way or another over this long journey. I have grown to love all these people – even, to a small extent, the High Elves – and if you were to succeed in your scheme, you'll rob them, and all the other people of this world whom I've yet to meet, of one of their most precious treasures: their individuality, and the traits which make them stand out from each other and all the rest. This, I believe, is completely and utterly unacceptable.

"I, on the other hand, intend to change the things that MADE them evil or cruel or selfish or indolent. The Drow, for example, were evil and wicked and wretched not because it was their inherent nature, but because their malicious deity put them into a society that pretty much FORCED them into being awful people, and given the chance to try things differently, in a less repressive society, I believe they would've turned out far differently. Even the High Elves, despite the atrocities they've committed, might have been different had their society not been so steeped in Glamour, narcissism, and self-glorification, reinforcing their belief that they were the only people that mattered, and I would like to think that now that I've more or less destroyed their civilization, some of them may be able to see things clearly for the first time and realize there was another way. I intend to do the same on a global scale… I will tear down the broken and dysfunctional regimes and governments and societies which reward cruelty and greed and crush the weak, replacing them with more healthy systems promoting growth and change, inspiring people to become better rather than staying in the same, tired rut they've been in for millennia, constantly ground down by the wheels of the world. I'm aware that this may not work for everyone – the wendigos, after all, were irredeemable evil spirits, and I'm certain there are other places and people like them out in the world who simply cannot, _will_ not be saved, and then, of course, there's *shudder* the _whales_ – but I shall do my best to help everyone else.

"Those who seek to join me in fulfilling my vision of a united, peaceful world will be welcomed with open arms. Those who seek to destroy me or hurt the people I care about and am sworn to protect I will break without remorse. I shall be both savior and destroyer, liberator and conqueror, bringing hope with one hand to those who need it most and death to those who stole that hope away with the other. And then, once I'm through, a new world shall be born… One where people of all races and species and creeds can live together in peace and strive for a brighter future. One where nobody will be feared or ostracized or… Or sealed away or banished for being different. One where…" The familiar image flashed before her eyes, of a kitten alone and crying in terror… Though by this point Blaze couldn't tell what color its fur was. It didn't really matter. "Where a little girl doesn't have to cry alone and know that nobody is coming to help her! _That_ is the world I seek to create!"

…

Everyone was silent for a moment, staring at Blaze in disbelief. "That… Is quite the dream," Espio admitted, impressed.

"You… You really want all that?" Amy asked, wonderingly.

"I do," Blaze said.

"And you really think the best way to bring it about is by taking over the world?" Mighty pressed.

"It seems like the most expedient option," Blaze said with a shrug.

"And how's that working out for you?" Rouge asked, curious. "Is the world you've made so far everything like you imagined it to be?"

"I cannot say that the kingdom I've built is perfect," Blaze said honestly. "But I can truthfully say that I've done my best to make it match my vision as closely as possible. Most of the people I've conquered don't complain very much, after the initial adjustment period."

"A world where a little girl doesn't have to cry alone… I think… I think I'd like to see that world," Shadow said softly.

"Perhaps you can come visit some time," Blaze offered.

Cream gasped and looked at her great-uncle hopefully. "Can we, Grunkle Shadow? Can we please?"

Shadow chuckled and ruffled his great-niece's head. "We'll have to to talk it over with your mother first, I think."

"I-DON'T-KNOW," Omega complained. "THAT-SOUNDS-LIKE-A-BORING-WORLD-TO-ME."

"They've got battle arenas, monsters roaming the countryside, and you can always head out to the front lines to join the armies out conquering other countries," Sonic suggested.

"TELL-ME-MORE," Omega said, intrigued.

"Perhaps later," Silver interjected. "Blaze, continue, please."

…

Cosmo gasped. Blaze had discussed her dream once or twice before, but never quite so eloquently as this. "Blaze… That's… That's beautiful…"

"It is indeed," Dark Oak agreed softly. "Certainly not the sort of dream I would have expected from a self-proclaimed destroyer of worlds such as yourself, Blaze."

"It's not the dream I would've expected from me, either," Blaze admitted. "And once upon a time, I don't think it would've been my dream at all… But I have changed, and so have my dreams, as well as my definition of what being the Destroyer of Worlds really means. After all, what _is_ a world when you get right down to it? It's more than just a planet. In olden times, people foretold the end of the world all the time, but really, for them, 'the world' just meant everything around them, the places and people they knew and were familiar with, because they lacked the vision or imagination to perceive the wider world around them… And when their prophecies came true, and they picked up the pieces after the end, they saw that the sun was still shining elsewhere, and realized that perhaps the world was bigger than they'd ever dreamed, and so began anew.

"And really, when you think about it… Every person is a world unto themselves. After all, isn't it often said in stories that when a person learns a particularly shocking revelation, the whole world seems to turn upside down for them? Whenever a person dies, their world ends. Whenever a person changes, again, so does their world. And so, that is what I shall do. To make my world a reality, I shall change the worlds of others to match my own vision, just as all leaders change the worlds of those they inspire who choose to follow them. In doing so, they destroy the worlds they knew and held so dear…allowing for the rise of something new. After all, what is destruction but another stage on the wheel of existence, constantly turning and transforming the old into the new? Destruction need not be simply an instrument of death and terror, but a tool for change. And that is exactly what I intend to do… Change the world, and in so doing fulfill my duty as the Destroyer of Worlds by rendering the old world little more than a memory so that something new and wonderful may take its place. And I'm not going to use some extradimensional plant to do it, either! I will change this world with my own two hands!"

"Your own… Wait! Do you mean to say… You won't use the power of the Golden Fruit?!" Dark Oak asked incredulously.

"No, I won't," Blaze said firmly. "That thing has brought nothing but trouble, and I can't see anything good come from using it or anything else associated with that accursed forest. Once I defeat you, I'm going to take that fruit and do what I do best… Destroy it utterly, so that nobody, least of all myself, can ever be tempted to use its power again!"

"But… But that's preposterous!" Eggman Nega sputtered, shocked. "Leaving aside the impossibility of destroying something as powerful as the Golden Fruit… There's no way anyone could ever turn down that much power! It's… It's the ability to make a whole new world!"

…

"I have to find myself agreeing with him there," Rouge interrupted. "I certainly wouldn't turn down power like that, and I'm set to inherit the Dark Heart, one of the most powerful energy sources in the world!"

"Yes, well, you aren't me," Blaze said bluntly.

"And besides, Rouge, Blaze wanted to change the world. Aren't you more interested in keeping it the way it is now?" Tails pointed out.

The bat considered this for a moment. "… Fair point," she admitted grudgingly.

…

"And why would I ever need such a thing, when I'm perfectly capable of doing that on my own?" Blaze retorted. "I'm aware it won't be nearly as easy as if I claimed the Fruit's power… But I don't trust anything that could offer a shortcut like that. It feels like a cheat, and often has a way of backfiring on the user in the end."

"But… If you don't claim the Fruit, there's no way you'll ever have the power to achieve your dream!" Dark Oak protested in disbelief. "I may be powerful, but the warlords and monsters outside our borders are even stronger! Without the power of Helheim behind you, how could you possibly think you have a chance of defeating them?!"

Blaze grinned. "Because I have seen the power of Helheim. I have seen its terrible majesty, the strength it can grant, the atrocities and horrors it can create, the way it warps the very world around it to reflect itself… And yet, despite having all that power behind you, you and your underlings _still_ haven't been able to stop me from getting this far! Personally, I find myself wondering if this oh-so-vaunted Golden Fruit is really all it's cracked up to be, if everything I've seen so far is anything to go by. The only power I need to stop you, and everyone who comes after you… Is right here, inside of me!" She declared, pointing to herself.

"Th-that's…you…!" Dark Oak spluttered, incandescent.

"You wretched mongrel! Who do you think you are, to consider yourself greater than the power of Helheim?!" Nega demanded furiously.

Cosmo chuckled. "Oh, you should not have asked that…"

Blaze's grin widened. "Even after all that I've done, you really don't know, do you? Prophecies have warned you of me for untold ages, since before the dawn of civilization. Every culture, society, and species has legends and stories about me and the terror I will bring. Stories about how I will tear down the world as you know it, and leave something completely unrecognizable in its place. How I will utterly destroy all who stand against me. How I will bring death to untold billions, until the soil is turned red from the blood of my victims. Parents tell their children to behave, or else I'll come to kill them in the night, and desperately hope that they aren't accidentally telling the truth. I am Blaze the Cat… Queen of Demons, Chiefest of Calamities, Archfiend of the Abyssal Planes, Flames of Disaster, Avatar of Iblis, and Destroyer of Worlds!"

Cosmo sighed happily. "I love it when you do that."

…

"You really made that your own, didn't you?" Rouge said approvingly.

Blaze smirked. "While it was originally a term of insult and shame, I think I've turned it into a pretty good boast, don't you?"

"A BADASS boast!" Charmy agreed enthusiastically.

…

Dark Oak stared at Blaze for a long time, considering. "… Do you know, I'm actually starting to believe that you might be capable of doing everything you claim you will do, Blaze. You certainly have managed to accomplish a number of feeds that even I, in my most optimistic and naïve, would've believed to be impossible."

"'Impossible' is not a word that is in my vocabulary," Blaze bragged.

…

"Wait, then how did you just use it in a sentence?" Asked a confused Knuckles.

Blaze stumbled. "It… I was just boasting, Knuckles. Of course I know what 'impossible' means. I'm just good at doing things that others believe cannot be done."

"Which is something that could be said about most of us, really," Sonic pointed out.

…

"Father, if you believe that Blaze's wish has a chance of coming true…if even you admit that the world she envisions is a beautiful one… Won't you please let us make that world a reality?" Cosmo begged her father one last time. "There is room for everyone in it… Even you."

"Except for whales," Blaze interjected. "That's non-negotiable."

Cosmo rolled her eyes. "What if they behave?"

"They won't," Blaze said bluntly.

"But what if they did?" Cosmo insisted.

Blaze sighed. "Then I… _suppose_ I might let some in…if I _really_ have to…"

…

"Isn't it rather hypocritical of you to talk about creating a utopia where everyone can live together happily and exclude one species just because you don't like them?" Amy interrupted.

"I've extended the Olive branch multiple times. It's not my fault they keep eating it…" Blaze grumbled.

"And then trying to eat her," Sonic added. "Damn whales."

"I'm not sure this is a side of you I like, Sonic," Mighty complained. "I mean, I only got hit by the one truck, but you don't see me having an irrational hatred of all truckers."

"But that's just it, Mighty," Sonic argued. "You only got hit by ONE truck. You might change your stance after a couple dozen…"

"Everyone's really a bit racist," Charmy added. "That musical with the puppets says so!"

"Really? Which one? I love puppets!" Cream asked, perking up.

"It's… ah… A rather mature puppet show, honey," Shadow said quickly. "One you aren't quite old enough to see just yet."

Cream sighed wearily. "Of course I'm not…"

…

"Father… Won't you please stop this and join us?" Cosmo begged her father. "Together, I'm sure we can create the new world Blaze envisions… A world even you admit would be worthwhile!"

"… I cannot," Dark Oak said solemnly. "I have come too far. I have done too much. If I were simply too stop now, and turn my back on everything I have worked for… Then all the sacrifices I've made, all the atrocities I've committed, will have been for nothing."

Blaze snorted. "That old argument? You do realize that when I defeat you, and destroy all your plans, everything you've worked for will STILL have been for nothing, right?"

"Yes… But that is ONLY if you defeat me," Dark Oak pointed out.

Blaze smirked. "Given my track record so far, I'm feeling pretty confident."

"And yet, so am I," Dark Oak said with a hint of smugness.

"And why's that?" Blaze asked suspiciously.

"Because I have an ace up my sleeve… Isn't that right, White Seed?" Dark Oak asked.

Blaze blinked in confusion. "White Seed? Who-"

And that's when Cosmo, a blank look in her eyes, whipped out a dagger and thrust it at Blaze's back.

…

Everyone started. "Wait, what?!" Amy cried.

Cream gasped. "No!"

"That's… That doesn't make any sense, why would she-" stammered a horrified Vector.

"Did you die?!" Charmy blurted.

There was a pause. Everyone stared at the bee like he was an idiot. "Charmy," Sonic said slowly, as if to a very stupid child. "If Blaze had died, how could she be telling us the story right now?"

"She could have had an extra life," Charmy retorted. "And besides, all of us have died at least once, haven't we?" The others reluctantly admitted he had a point.

"I don't understand… Why did Cosmo do that?" Asked a confused Knuckles.

"No… Don't tell me she was evil all along!" Said the distraught Shadow.

"Yeah, that's such a big cliché!" Mighty complained. Everyone glared at him. "What? It is!"

"No! She can't be! Blaze said Cosmo was her best friend!" Cream said desperately.

"Yes, and aside from that, if she were evil, not only would she not be around now, I highly doubt Tails would be dating her," Rouge agreed.

"No, Cosmo is not and never was evil," Blaze reassured them all. "The truth is a bit more… Complicated."

…

The dagger froze, inches from Blaze's back, on account of the vice-like grip clutching its holder's wrist. "Ah," Blaze said calmly, as if there weren't a deadly blade poised to pierce her back. "I was wondering when you were going to try that."

The two villains were flabbergasted. "Wondering… No! You can't mean to tell us-" Dark Oak stammered.

"You KNEW this was coming?! Impossible!" Eggman Nega screamed.

Ignoring them, Blaze, still in a calm tone of voice, said, "Cosmo, can you hear me?"

Cosmo blinked, the blank look going from her eyes and her hold on the dagger loosening. "Unh…what? Blaze? Why…" Her eyes widened in horror when she realized what she was doing. "Why am I pointing a dagger at your back?!"

Inwardly, Blaze sighed in relief. Her worst fear had not come to pass. "You were pointing a dagger at my back because you were about to stab me with it."

Cosmo gasped and recoiled, dropping the dagger to the floor. "What?! No! That's not possible, I would NEVER-"

"You would," Blaze interjected. "If you were a sleeper agent for your father… Which is something I've suspected for a very long time now."

"What?!" Cosmo gasped in disbelief.

…

"WHAT?!" just about everyone echoed.

"Well, I'm starting to get uncomfortable flashbacks now," Shadow commented.

"She was a sleeper agent the whole time?!" Asked an incredulous Mighty.

"But how? She was awake!" Said the confused Knuckles.

There was a pause, and then everyone stared at Knuckles blankly. "Knuckles, what exactly do you think a sleeper agent is?" Rouge asked after a moment.

Knuckles stammered, flustered. "W-well, I know _exactly_ what it is, of course, b-but I'm not sure Cream knows what it is."

"I know what a sleeper agent is," Cream said.

"… Oh. Well. Good," Knuckles said awkwardly.

"A sleeper agent is sort of like a spy under deep cover," Rouge explained, taking pity on her idiot boyfriend. "Someone who absolutely nobody would ever suspect of actually working for the enemy. In fact, sometimes the spy is undercover so deep not even THEY know that they're actually working for the enemy. And then, one day, the order comes in to activate them, and they strike when their friends and allies least expect it, causing devastating damage, crippling their morale and leaving them wondering forever after just who they can trust, shaking their resolve and making it that much easier for their foe to defeat them."

"You speak as if you've had experience with this," Amy commented.

Rouge faltered. "I'd… Rather not talk about."

"So… Cosmo was actually working for her father the whole time, but didn't realize she was working for her father?" Vector asked, confused. "How does that work?"

"Brainwashing and hypnosis, usually," Rouge said. Amy raised an eyebrow. The bat scoffed. "I told you, I don't want to talk about it."

"I'm getting there," Blaze promised.

…

"What?! Impossible! There's no way you could possibly have known that!" Eggman Nega protested, indignant.

"Ah, but I _didn't_ know," Blaze said with a smirk. "Suspected, yes. Knew for a fact? No."

"But how could you even guess that much? We were very careful," said an intrigued Dark Oak.

"You were," Blaze agreed. "Nevertheless, there were a few clues. The first one, ironically, came up when I first met Cosmo." She glanced at her friend, who still looked bewildered and lost. "Cosmo, do you recall how when Red Pine attacked the village, you were shocked? You said that there was no way he could possibly have found you so quickly?"

Cosmo blinked, startled. "Y-yes, I remember that. We never did figure out how he was able to find us, did we?"

"We didn't, though I had my suspicions," Blaze continued. "The logical answer at the time was that someone from the village had ratted you out. Perhaps even one of your bodyguards."

Cosmo gasped. "What?! No! They would never!"

"You're right, they didn't," Blaze agreed. "The fact that Red Pine's forces killed pretty much everyone and tortured all of your bodyguards to death except for Damil convinced me of that notion. While I supposed it was possible that Red Pine had simply chosen to kill the traitor after he was no longer of use to him, that wouldn't explain how he didn't know that you were in the underground temple looking for me, which almost everyone in the village, and ESPECIALLY your bodyguards, must have known.

"After that, I wondered if perhaps, since Damil WAS the only member of your retinue left alive, maybe he WAS the traitor, and Red Pine had roughed him up on purpose to make his cover seem that much more convincing, and that he was still spying on us… But it didn't take long to disabuse me of that notion. He was far too loyal to you to possibly be a spy."

Cosmo smiled fondly. "He truly is a faithful friend, isn't he?"

"I wanted to put it out of my mind after that, but I still had my suspicions. A part of me even wondered if, perhaps, YOU were actually a double agent, even though I knew it didn't make much sense, because I wasn't sure what other explanation there could be," Blaze continued.

"You suspected me all along?" Cosmo asked, hurt. "I mean, apparently you were right, but…"

"I didn't WANT to," Blaze insisted. "I was indebted to you, Cosmo, for everything you've done for me. For liberating from that horrible prison and giving me new purpose. I didn't want to think that perhaps you might be playing some long game and were using me for some nefarious agenda. It didn't help that there was one lingering part about your story which kept nagging at me."

"What?" Cosmo asked, confused.

"You told me that your sister sacrificed herself to buy you time to escape from your father's forces when he transformed into Dark Oak," Blaze went on. "However, you never went into specifics, and whenever I pressed, you always told me it was not something you wanted to think about."

"It still isn't," Cosmo said with a grimace.

"Which doesn't surprise me," Blaze agreed. "However, you always said that after you escaped, you rendezvoused with Damil and the rest of your retainers. When I questioned him on the matter, he admitted that he had no idea how you had managed to escape, but considered it a miracle and decided not to think too hard on it. I, unfortunately, could do nothing BUT think on it. Wondering if, perhaps, there was more to your escape than you were telling me."

"B-but there wasn't!" Cosmo insisted. After a pause, she uncertainly asked, "Was there?"

"There was," Blaze said. "But I'm getting ahead of myself. Despite these lingering doubts, I did my best to trust and believe in you… And for the most part, my faith seemed to be rewarded. You were a good and loyal friend, and nothing seemed to happen which would indicate that you were a traitor. While we were occasionally ambushed by your father's forces, there was nothing to indicate that they had advance notice that we were coming, and whenever we encountered any of the Four Heavenly Generals or other commanders, they did not know of any of our plans ahead of time. In fact, Black Narcissus tried to hold you hostage and threatened to kill you!"

Cosmo shuddered. "That was NOT a pleasant experience."

"No, it wasn't… but something about that roused my suspicions again and caused me to realize something. Red Pine had been chasing you all over the country trying to find you and bring you back to your father, correct?" Blaze questioned.

Cosmo nodded. "That's right."

"But after we killed him… That was it. No more attempts to capture you followed after that. While we ran into Inves and other minions of your father, they made no particular effort to try and reclaim you. In fact, most them seemed to have no problem trying to KILL you. Even Black Narcissus seemed to be more interested in using you as a bargaining chip and didn't show any inclination of being under orders to return you to your father! Now, doesn't something about that seem strange?" Blaze pressed.

Cosmo's eyes widened in astonishment. "You're… You're right! That doesn't make sense! How did we not realize that sooner?"

"But while that made me suspicious, I still couldn't figure it all out. I knew that there had to be something I was missing, some piece of the puzzle I hadn't yet uncovered… Until we came here, and Dark Oak explained how I was the key component to fulfilling his plans, how he needed a competitor, a rival, to make the Golden Fruit bloom. It was in that moment that I realized the truth…

"Cosmo, you didn't escape your father. He LET you leave, so that you could seek out and find a hero strong enough to oppose him… And then, when the moment was right, to strike her down when she least expected it, and hand your father his ultimate victory!" Blaze declared.

Cosmo recoiled in horror. "What?!"

"Except, of course, that you _did_ expect it," Dark Oak said, impressed, clapping slowly. "Well done, Blaze. You truly _are_ a crafty one, aren't you?"

"Not bad for a mangy feline," Nega said grudgingly.

"No… That… That can't be…" Cosmo whispered in horror. "How… How could…"

"Think back, daughter," Dark Oak said calmly. "Recall what happened in the moments after your sister's death."

Cosmo squeezed her eyes shut, clenching her teeth. "No… I… I don't want to…"

"She died, horribly," Dark Oak said with a tinge of regret. "You ran. What happened then?"

"I… I escaped… I met up with Damil and-" Cosmo started.

"No," Dark Oak said firmly. "You did not. Think harder. _Remember._ "

"Stop this!" Blaze hissed angrily.

"I am only finishing what you have started, Miss Blaze," Dark Oak said. "You've opened her eyes to the truth. Now it is time she understood ALL of it."

"I… I ran… Through hallways and passages, desperately seeking the way out…" Cosmo whispered, trembling, tears streaming down her cheeks. "And then… And then there was an Inves… And I heard your voice… And…ah! AAAAHHHH!" Screaming, clutching her head in pain, she fell to her knees.

"Cosmo!" Blaze cried in alarm, crouching down and grabbing her friend.

"We captured her," Dark Oak said. "Before she could make it out of the palace. I wanted to keep her locked up for her own safety, but Nega had… Other plans."

"I knew there was a possibility that we would be unable to grow the Golden Fruit using only the bastardized power of the Sol Emeralds, so hit upon the idea of deliberately creating a hero to oppose us and provide the necessary counterbalance against my Liege needed to facilitate the Fruit's growth," Nega said smugly. "And realized rather quickly that Cosmo would be the ideal instrument for that task… After all, the surviving princess of a Royal line, seeking the realm for a hero of legend… How many stories and tales have begun on such a simple, clichéd premise? Nobody would ever suspect that she was nothing more than our unwitting pawn, especially if we sent minions chasing after her from the start to make her story seem more convincing. So many altruistic fools would just accept it at face value and play right into our hands. It was perfect!"

"And I don't suppose Red Pine or any of the other generals were aware of this?" Blaze asked, disgusted and furious, both at the villains and at herself for not figuring it out sooner.

Nega snorted. "Don't be preposterous. If they'd have known, it would have ruined the whole thing!"

"Especially once they realized you were setting them up just to fall before me!" Blaze snarled, outraged. "They were your most loyal subordinates! They followed you down this dark and treacherous path! How could you betray them like that?!"

"Miss Blaze, after everything and everyone else I've already betrayed, is this really that much of a shock for you?" Dark Oak asked dryly.

"… Fair point," the cat admitted grudgingly.

"What… What did you do to me?" Cosmo whispered, clawing at her skull. "Why… why can't I remember?!"

"Not too much, really," Nega said smoothly. "Just erased a few memories, planted a few post-hypnotic suggestions into your subconscious to guide you in the direction we wanted you to… Oh, and attached an implant just behind your right eye so that we could see everything you saw and, if necessary, give you a bit of an extra… Push in the right direction."

Cosmo gasped in horror, a hand shooting up to cover her right eye. "You've seen everything I've seen this whole time?!" she cried in disbelief.

"We did. Made for some rather entertaining viewing, too," Nega said smugly.

"Which meant you were privy to all of our battle plans and tactics… And yet you acted on none of them. Why?" Asked the confused Blaze.

"For the same reason my four generals and the rest of my forces were not informed as to my true plans regarding you or my daughter," Dark Oak explained. "If we crushed you too early, we feared that the victory would not be satisfactory enough to meet the requirements for the Golden Fruit's genesis. So, we allowed you to get stronger and stronger while building up our own power at the same time, so that when at last we met face-to-face all would be in readiness for the Fruit to grow." He looked up at the ceiling. "And indeed, I do believe that time has finally arrived. The Fruit is ready. It is almost fully ripened. All I must do now is best you, and its power will be mine."

"And again, you get ahead of yourself," Blaze snarled. "It's the 'besting me' part you should be a bit worried about… For let me warn you, I was angry before, but after everything you've just told me? After reviewing what you've done to Cosmo, how you been stringing me along this whole time?" She grinned savagely. "Before, I was just going to kill you. Now, I'm going to _destroy_ you. And trust me when I say it won't be quick."

"On the contrary, Miss Blaze!" Nega sneered. "It is YOU who are getting ahead of yourself!"

Blaze glanced at the mad scientist. "What?"

The madman chuckled. "You didn't really think a command to kill was the ONLY thing we put into Cosmo, did you? The implant I put in her has an explosive attached to it! All I have to do is press a button, and her head will EXPLODE like an overripe melon!"

"What?!" Blaze and Cosmo cried in disbelief.

"N-no!" Cosmo wailed, scratching frantically at her head, as if trying to claw out the bomb inside of her.

Blaze's eyes flashed, flames igniting around her. "Just when I think you couldn't sink any lower! This… This is abominable!"

"I've sacrificed my Queen, my kingdom, my most loyal servants, and even my principles… What's one more daughter on top of all that?" Dark Oak asked resignedly.

"If you don't want your little friend's head to become a crimson flower, I suggest you surrender right this instant," Nega sneered. "And make it snappy… I have VERY slippery fingers…"

Blaze shook with rage… And then closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled, her fiery aura vanishing. "I see. So that is how it is to be, then? Well… I suppose that I have no other recourse…"

Cosmo gasped. "Blaze, no!"

"I'm sorry, Cosmo, but there's no other way I can think of…" Blaze said quietly, turning to face her friend.

Dark Oak chuckled. "As I expected… Despite your demonic origins, you truly are a hero, aren't you? And no real hero could ever betray a friend, could they? Even when it means dooming the whole world…" He rose to his feet, lifting his great sword.

Cosmo desperately clasped Blaze's hands. "Blaze, no, you can't give up! Everyone is counting on you! If you give up, just for me, I… I'd never be able to-"

Blaze placed a finger on her friend's lips. "Shh. It's fine. Everything's going to be all right."

"But-"

"Do you trust me?"

Cosmo was taken aback. "What?"

"Do you trust me?" Blaze repeated.

"I…y-yes, of course, but-" Cosmo stammered.

"Good," Blaze said. Without turning her head, she asked, "The implant is behind her RIGHT eye, you said?"

Dark Oak hesitated, partway off his throne, and Nega frowned in puzzlement. "Eh? Yes, why do you-"

"Oh, no reason," Blaze said calmly, staring right at Cosmo. The Princess's eyes widened in astonishment… And then, she gave the slightest of nods. Blaze smiled in return…

Then shot a claw forward and _ripped her right eye right out of its socket._

…

"HOLY FUCK!" Vector shouted as Charmy threw up.

"WHAT THE HELL, BLAZE?!" A horrified Amy demanded.

"Well, how else was I supposed to get the bomb out of her head without killing her?" Blaze asked, annoyed.

There was a pause as everyone considered this, broken only by the sound of Charmy dry heaving. "Oh," Mighty said finally.

"Yes, I can see the logic of that," Espio admitted.

"A bit hardcore even for me, though," Shadow confessed grudgingly.

"MAGNIFICENT," Omega said rapturously.

"There… Really wasn't a better way than that?" Cream asked, looking queasy.

"None I could think of off the top of my head in what little time I had," Blaze said. "Besides, it worked, which is all that matters in the end, I think."

"Well… I suppose I can't fault you for your practicality," Rouge admitted. "I probably might've done the same thing, in your shoes."

"I'm not sure I would have," Sonic confessed. "Then again, my mind doesn't exactly work the same way as hers does."

Blaze kissed his cheek. "Which is perfectly fine, beloved. I like your mind just the way it is." He smirked at that.

"I suppose it grew back, right? Because of her plant… Healing… Thing?" Knuckles asked.

"Unfortunately, no," Blaze said regretfully. "Due to the nerve damage caused by the surgery to implant the explosive in the first place, her eye was never able to heal properly. She accepted it with good cheer, however, viewing the scar tissue as a reminder to always be vigilant against evil, no matter where it might spring from."

"She usually covers it with an eyepatch, which makes her look like an awesome pirate princess, in my opinion," Tails said sheepishly.

Blaze nodded. "She considered growing a flower over it instead, but I told her that would be too creepy."

Rouge shuddered. "Yes, it would be, especially with certain flowers I've heard of…"

"So, what did you do with the bomb?" Vector asked, trying very hard not to think about what it was attached to.

…

"What… What the-" Nega spluttered, dumbstruck.

"Nega! Detonate it! Quickly!" Dark Oak said sharply.

"Eh? Oh! Right!" Nega quickly stabbed a button on his dashboard, but not before Blaze had hurled the severed eyeball halfway across the room, causing it to explode in a blinding flash and deafening roar. Nega flinched as the shockwave knocked his hovercraft back, grateful that he was wearing dark glasses so the billowing smoke didn't get in his eyes…

Which meant that when Blaze shot out of the blast, smoke and flames trailing from her clothes, he saw it coming. His eyes widened in horror as her burning claws swept towards him...

Only for a massive blade to interpose itself between Nega and the vengeful feline, Blaze ricocheting off of it, flipping through the air, and skidding across the floor on her heels, a vicious snarl on her face. "My apologies, Miss Blaze," Dark Oak said, stepping forward, twirling his sword through the air. "But I cannot allow you to slay my ally just yet. I still have use of him for the time being."

"Planting a bomb in your daughter's eye… Unforgivable," Blaze hissed.

"Even more unforgivable than the things I've already done?" Dark Oak questioned.

"As a parent myself? _Absolutely_ ," Blaze snarled.

Dark Oak inclined his head at that. "You love that half-breed very much, don't you?"

"I do," Blaze said, a proud smile flickering across her face. "In fact, even if all the other things I said before were not true… My vision for the world, and how it conflicts with yours… I would never have joined you for the simple reason that you and your minions _made her cry_ , and that is something I absolutely cannot forgive."

Dark Oak nodded. "There was a time when I would have felt the exact same way… But I'm not that person anymore, am I?"

"No," Blaze said, voice dripping with disgust mingled with pity. "You aren't." Without taking her eyes off of her foe, she called over her shoulder, "Cosmo? How are you doing?"

"I've been better," Cosmo said weakly, a hand clutched over the bleeding hole where her eye had once been. "Don't worry about me, though. Focus on taking care of my father!"

"I'm here too, you know…" Nega muttered.

Blaze's eyes narrowed, locking gazes with whatever was behind the green orb covering the front of Dark Oak's helmet. Without warning, she dashed sideways, hurling fireball after fireball at her nemesis. Dark Oak's sword flashed through the air, deflecting every projectile flung at him, explosions and bursts of flame flashing across the room as the fire blasts smashed into the walls and floor, causing Nega to yelp as one came very close to singeing his mustache. Blaze backflipped and twirled and pirouetted through the air as her own fireballs flew back at her, lightning-quick reflexes prompting her to snatch up any projectile which came close to her, filling her claws with fire. When she landed, she smashed her flaming claws together, melding the fireballs she'd collected into a huge orb of flame, which she threw at Dark Oak. The overlord's sword shot down, slicing through the blazing sphere, causing its two halves to shoot past him and explode against the far wall, setting more of the foliage choking the room ablaze…

And Blaze, who had been right behind the fireball, using its massive size to cloak her movements, shot towards Dark Oak's face with a Fire Claw. His sword quickly shot up to block her, and her claws smashed into it instead, sparks and embers flying through the air as well as the aggravating screech of nails on metal. Blaze flipped back, landed on the ground, then immediately surged forwards again, claws lashing out again and again and again, Dark Oak's sword moving at incredible speeds to block and counter every attack, exchanging dozens of blows per second, flames and small explosions erupting from the ground around them due to the sparks and energy flung off from the intensity of their rapid clash.

"I must admit," Dark Oak grunted as he countered and parried claw thrust after slash after swipe from his foe. "I was actually hoping it would come to this. While I understood and respected the practicality of my other plans, a part of me always hoped that it would all come down to this: two warriors, at the peak of their martial prowess, fighting with everything they have for the fate of the world. The stuff of legends, is it not?"

"If it is, then my legend is only just beginning… While yours is about to come to an end!" Blaze snarled, claws flashing to deflect a chop from Dark Oak's sword.

"Whoever wins, from this point forward, the loser's legend will be a part of the victor's," Dark Oak replied, using the advantage of his greater size and strength to push Blaze back towards the wall even as they continued exchanging blows. "Even if I die, my memory shall live on in the tales and stories sung about your own exploits… And I promise you, should I win, I will make sure the same happens to you."

"Most kind of you," Blaze admitted grudgingly.

"Nobody deserves to be forgotten," Dark Oak said solemnly. "Especially larger-than-life figures such as ourselves. And I'm fairly certain that win or lose, the actions we've taken to bring us to this point will ensure that we will _never_ be forgotten."

"But as what, I wonder?" Blaze retorted. "As heroes, or as villains?"

"Let's find out," Dark Oak said, thrusting his sword forwards.

Blaze, instead of parrying the blow, sidestepped, causing the sword to shoot past her and bury itself partway into the wall… Which, Dark Oak realized, must have been her intent all along. He started to pull it out, but before he could, Blaze jumped onto its edge and ran down its length with perfect balance, throwing a fiery punch at his face. A gauntleted hand shot up to catch her punch, but she used the remaining momentum to lash out with a kick to the chin that snapped his head back and sent him staggering a few steps back, letting go of his sword in the process. Blaze backflipped from the impact, her feet touching the wall and emitting a blast of flames which boosted her forwards, incinerating more foliage in the process and sending her rocketing towards Dark Oak.

The warlord swiftly recovered and flung a punch at the oncoming feline, but Blaze twisted in midair to dodge the blow, spinning in a horizontal whirlwind of flame that lashed out at the side of Dark Oak's arm as she passed, slicing through chunks of his armor and burning it. As she flew past him, Dark Oak grunted in pain, but used the momentum from his punch to grab the hilt of his sword, ripping it out of the wall, and bringing it swinging around in a massive horizontal chop, sending out a shockwave of energy which slammed into Blaze and flung her into the wall on the other side of the room. Before she could recover, Dark Oak gestured, and the foliage covering the wall came to life, wrapping around Blaze's limbs and holding her in place. Dark Oak opened his free hand, gathering power is he formed a massive energy ball…

And with a cry of fury, fire blasted out from Blaze in every direction, reducing the plants holding her and much of the wall to ash in a second. Half a second later, Dark Oak fired his energy ball. Instead of dodging, Blaze ran towards it, leaped into the air, and struck it with a fiery whirlwind kick, hurling it back at its master. Instead of blocking or cutting the orb in half, Dark Oak sidestepped the energy ball, which shot past him and struck the wall behind him, exploding and causing his cape to billow from the blast. As Blaze charged towards him, Dark Oak drove his sword into the ground, causing the earth to shake and the floor to fracture as great thorny roots erupted all over the place. Blaze didn't bother dodging or sidestepping the obstacles, but plowed right through them, her body engulfed in flames as she used her Fire Boost. Chuckling in amusement, Dark Oak gathered power around himself as well and dashed across the floor to meet her, swinging his blade with all his might.

The two collided with a thunderclap which shook the chamber, the ground cratering beneath them, cracks running across the walls and ceiling, and Cosmo and Nega both getting buffeted back from the resulting shockwaves. The recoil from the impact sent the two combatants flying, but both of them managed to gamely recover, flipping around so their feet made contact with the ceiling or walls, allowing them to push off and launch towards each other again, colliding in the center of the room again and again, rebounding from every clash only to come together again, each impact stronger than the last.

"You… Are very strong," Dark Oak grunted as he struggled with all his might to push his sword through Blaze's firey aura. "Most impressive."

"They do not call me the Destroyer of Worlds for nothing," Blaze said smugly, teeth gritted as she pushed back against Dark Oak just as strongly.

"Even so, I do not think you'll be penetrating my guard," Dark Oak retorted. "My sword is made of an unbreakable alloy… No power in this world can resist it!"

Blaze grinned then, and her hands slowly pushed forwards, struggling their way through Dark Oak's own battle aura. "Then I suppose it's a good thing… That I'm not _from_ this world, am I?"

"What?!" Dark Oak barked as Blaze managed to grab the edge of his sword… And then, in a blast of power, the blade _shattered_. There was a moment of silence, and then a tremendous thunderclap as Dark Oak was flung backwards, slamming into his throne and destroying it. As he struggled to get to his feet and pull himself out of the wreckage, Blaze started charging towards him. Dark Oak growled and started throwing dozens of rapid-fire energy balls at Blaze. Moving so quickly that it was almost impossible to see her, Blaze glided through the projectiles, fists clenched tightly, something protruding through her fingers. When Dark Oak got fed up and fired energy blasts at the ground right between him and Blaze, causing the floor to shatter, Blaze leapt into the air and hurled what she'd been holding so tightly in her hands – some of the broken fragments of Dark Oak's sword. The shards flew through the air and pierced his already cracked and damaged armor, causing him to cry out and stumble backwards. Blaze spread her hands wide, not seeming to notice or care that they were bleeding from holding the pieces of broken sword so tightly, fire igniting around them. Igniting like a meteor, she shot forwards…

There was a flash, and suddenly she was standing behind Dark Oak in a crouch, back towards him, arms crossed over her chest. She took a deep breath, then lowered her arms to her side and stood up. There was a pause…

And then in a cry of agony, Dark Oak not only burst into flames, but _came apart_ , his body falling to pieces, chunks of burning armor and plant-flesh collapsing to the ground behind Blaze. "It looks like your world has come to an end after all," Blaze said calmly she turned around to regard the smoldering remains of her greatest foe. "Your reign is over. And now mine can begin."

She narrowed her eyes at Nega, floating away at a safe distance. "After I take care of one last thing, of course…"

…

"That was an incredible battle!" Charmy gushed.

"You were AMAZING, Blaze!" Cream agreed, eyes glittering.

"Yeah, almost makes up for how you spent like forever debating philosophy with the guy first," Vector grunted.

"YOU-DEFEATED-HIM-MOST-SATISFACTORILY. I-EAGERLY-WAIT-TO-HEAR-HOW-YOU-DEFEATED-HIS-SECOND-FORM," Omega said gleefully.

Knuckles blinked. "Second form?"

"Well, yeah, if he was the final boss, that means he's GOTTA have a second form, right?" Mighty pointed out.

Espio nodded in agreement. "It stands to reason."

"Maybe even a third!" Charmy chirped.

Shadow nodded. "Yes, no final boss worth their salt only has a single form."

"Oh yeah… That's true," Knuckles realized.

"So what happened? Did he turn into a giant monster?" Amy asked.

"That's usually the case, yes," Rouge agreed.

"No, giant monster was his third form. Something else happened for his second," Blaze said.

"Do tell," Silver said.

…

Eggman Nega gulped, looking nervous for a moment… And then he chuckled, a smug expression flashing across his face. "Now, now, don't be so hasty, Miss Blaze… Your fight with my associate isn't over just yet!"

Blaze blinked in surprise. "What do you-"

Cosmo gasped. "Blaze, look!"

Blaze turned… And was startled, but ultimately not that surprised, when the charred, dismembered parts of Dark Oak's body started twitching. The burnt flesh and armor crumbled off to reveal pristine new material as vines shot out between the parts, pulling them back together and in short order reassembling Dark Oak, exactly as he had been before the fight had started, sans cape and sword. "I'm afraid," Dark Oak said with what Blaze was sure was a grin beneath his mask. "That it will be a lot harder to defeat me than that, Miss Blaze."

Blaze gnashed her teeth in frustration. She should have known. The final boss never went down after just one fight! "No matter. I'll just keep tearing you apart and burning you to cinders until it finally takes and you are no more, Dark Oak!"

"No, I don't think you will," Dark Oak said. "You have given me a good fight, Blaze the Cat… The best fight I've had in a long while, a fight that has more than energized the Golden Fruit to its apex! But now it is time for this fight to come to an end… Behold, as I reveal my true power!"

Blaze couldn't help sighing and rolling her eyes at this. "Of course you are. Why don't they ever just use their full power right from the start?"

"You usually don't," Cosmo pointed out.

"Hush," Blaze said.

The emblem on Dark Oak's chest lit up. "LOCK OPEN! KIWAMI ARMS!"

Several dimensional cracks opened, and a giant metal orange, grape, banana, melon, pinecone, acorn, durian, walnut, lemon, cherry, and peach emerged and started spinning around Dark Oak in a ring-

…

"Hey, why didn't you attack him while he was in the middle of his transformation sequence?" Mighty interrupted.

"Hey yeah, that's something I wish they'd do more often on TV," Charmy complained.

"And something that perhaps we should be doing more frequently as well," Shadow admitted.

"Well, yeah, but where's the fun in that?" Sonic said cheerfully.

Blaze rolled her eyes. "Believe me, the thought had crossed my mind. However, I tried doing that to the other Heavenly Generals after seeing what Red Pine could do, but their Armor Parts always intercepted my attacks."

"Armor Parts?" Amy asked.

"The big metal fruits," Blaze explained.

"Oh," the pink hedgehog said.

"So what kind of fruity form did this guy take?" Vector asked. "I don't think I've ever heard of a 'kiwami' fruit."

"That's because there isn't any," Tails said. "Kiwami is a Japanese word which roughly translates to 'extreme' or 'Zenith.'"

"Anything with a name like that must be very powerful…" Rouge murmured.

"Oh, it was," Blaze said grimly.

…

"DAI DAI DAI DAI DAI DAI-SHOGUN!"

The Armor Parts converged on Dark Oak, and in a shower of sparkling fruit juice, he was transformed. His armor had turned from dark purple to silvery-white. His cape had been restored, but was now pristine, with a red interior and black back. His helmet had changed shape, and was now tapered and conical with a rainbow-colored orb in front, and the horns had been replaced by a crest resembling a crescent blade, with one horn longer than the other.

But that was not the only change. Blaze could sense that the overlord's power had significantly increased, and was at least triple, if not more, than it had been before. _Incredible… Such immense, overwhelming_ power _…I'm actually feeling a little scared…_ A savage grin flashed across her face. _This is either going to be very painful…or very_ fun!

"This… Is MY stage now!" Dark Oak declared, cape billowing behind him… And without warning, a golden aura blazed up around him, generating a shockwave which cratered the floor beneath him and buffeted the other three people in the room.

Blaze's eyes widened in alarm as the golden aura washed outwards, pressing into her, shoving her back and trying to force her downwards. _Amazing… His power level just multiplied even further! It's taking everything I can just to keep standing in his presence… Is this what he's really capable of? Perhaps I was a bit too hasty to dismiss the power of Helheim…_ She ground her teeth, digging deep within herself for more power. Fire ignited around her, cratering the floor she was standing on as well, and with some effort she managed to straighten up, glaring defiantly at Dark Oak…

And then he chuckled, and his power increased even _further_ , the aura blasting out from him growing in strength and intensity, causing Blaze to gasp as the oppressive, crushing force slammed into her, forcing her to take a few steps backwards. _Gah! O…kay, starting to think I might be just a tiny bit over my head here…_

Nega cackled gleefully. "Spectacular! This surpasses all of my wildest expectations! And to think, this is just a FRACTION of the full power of the Golden Fruit!"

"A… Fraction?" Blaze hissed through clenched teeth as she struggled to keep from being overwhelmed by the seemingly endless waves of power being emanated by her foe.

Nega nodded eagerly. "Yes! I created the 'Arms' used by the others by modifying fruits from Helheim… Dark Oak's, however, was made by extracting the essence of one of the leftover seeds of the Golden Fruit. As such, he is able to tap into a fraction of that divine fruit's power… And if this is just a fraction, just IMAGINE what he can do with the whole thing!"

"I will be able to change the world completely," Dark Oak said. "With this strength alone, I could lay waste to nations… Can you match it, Blaze?"

"I certainly intend to try!" Blaze snarled, calling upon more of her inner strength, the corona around her boosting up as she tapped into more for power, energy waves rippling out from her clash against the Golden power radiating from Dark Oak.

"And you will not be alone in your efforts!"

Everyone's heads snapped around. "What? Who said that?" Dark Oak demanded.

"Did you bring someone else, Miss Blaze? And here I thought this was going to be a solo affair! How unsporting of you," Nega quipped with a straight face.

"That does not sound like anyone I recognize," Blaze said, puzzled.

"Did… Someone follow us?" Asked a confused Cosmo from where she lay slumped against a wall, breathing heavily, her body strained both from the loss of her eye and from the ridiculous amounts of power saturating the atmosphere of the room.

"Not exactly…" The voice spoke again. Without warning, a dimensional crack unzipped open, and a figure stepped through. Much to Blaze's surprise, rather than being an Inves or some other Helheim horror, he appeared to be a tiger with white fur and blonde hair wearing a suit of magnificent silver armor with a shimmering white cape. However, while he LOOKED normal enough, Blaze immediately sensed that he was far more than what he seemed… Possibly because of the fact that she could detect an _incredible_ amount of power emanating from within him, only barely concealed… a power which, oddly enough, felt similar to that being given off by Dark Oak, but… Cleaner, somehow. Purer. Devoid of evil intent.

In addition, she got the strangest feeling that which he saw was not what he actually looked like…

Dark Oak stirred and glanced at the tiger in astonishment. "Your power… It feels like mine, only… Different… Something about you seems… Familiar… How is this possible?"

"Who the hell are you?!" Nega demanded.

"That is a question I would like to know the answer to as well," Blaze said suspiciously.

The tiger smiled, but there was a hint of sadness in his expression. "Once upon a time, I went by the name of Kouta Kazuraba, but barely anyone remains to whom that name would mean anything. Nowadays, I go by the name of Gaim, though there are others who call me… The Man of the Beginning."

Dark Oak was clearly shaken. "Man of… But that's what I… Then you-! You possess the power of-"

"The Golden Fruit? That's right," Gaim said solemnly. "I passed the test of Helheim when it came to my world, and used it to create a new one… Sacrificing much in the process."

"Then what are you doing here? Do you want our Fruit, too? Well, you can't have it!" Nega snarled.

Gaim's eyes narrowed. "That's fine, because I don't want it. I never wanted mine in the first place, but it was the only way to make sure nobody else got it. It's bad enough that so many people who manage to claim its power are dictators and tyrants and monsters of the worst kind… But at least they win it FAIRLY, by the rules of the game. But what you two are doing… FORCING a Helheim incursion and trying to rig it to guarantee yourselves the chance to reshape the world to suit your desires… Somehow, that's even worse, and I'm here to put a stop to it, just as I would stop any who abused the Fruit's power, if I were able." He glanced at Blaze. "Miss Blaze, it's a pleasure to meet you. I've heard much of you from a mutual acquaintance. He's the one who sent me here, in fact. He thought you might need a hand."

Blaze narrowed her eyes. "By mutual acquaintance, I take it you mean Sagara?"

Gaim chuckled. "Who else?"

Blaze sighed and shook her head. "That meddling snake…I was wondering when I'd hear from him again. He just doesn't know when to leave well enough alone, does he?"

"You have no idea," Gaim said in amusement.

…

"Okay, I am so confused right now," said a dumbfounded Charmy.

"What's so confusing about it? That Sagara guy evidently thought Blaze needed help given that Dark Oak was stronger than expected so called up some other guy who'd already dealt with the Helheim problem on his world, believing he might be strong enough to help out. Seems pretty obvious to me," Knuckles said. Everyone stared at the echidna in astonishment. "What? I don't have to be oblivious ALL the time!" He said indignantly.

"While I believe Knuckles has summed it up rather well, that doesn't change the fact that this intervention is rather… Sudden," Rouge said tactfully.

"Total deus ex machina," Vector agreed.

"Yeah, there's no foreshadowing for this guy's arrival whatsoever!" Amy complained.

"Considering how often some of us have been deus ex machinas who show up to save the day with no foreshadowing whatsoever, that's a little hypocritical," Tails argued.

"Name one time that happened," Mighty complained.

"When I showed up from almost literally out of the blue to save the Smash Brothers from Tabuu during the whole Subspace Emissary thing?" Sonic suggested.

"… I think I was still in a coma during that," Mighty grumbled.

"What took you so long to get there, anyway?" Shadow asked.

Sonic shrugged. "The Subspace Labyrinth is a biiiiiiiig place. Easy to get lost."

"I wasn't 100% satisfied to see this newcomer either, but given the situation I was in, I wasn't really in any place to complain," Blaze said.

…

"While a part of my pride can't help feeling somewhat stung that Sagara thought I needed assistance… I suppose it would be churlish of me to turn down aid when proffered," Blaze said to the mysterious tiger. "However – and I do not mean to insult you by looking a gift horse in the mouth – given that my best friend literally just tried to stab me in the back – which I absolutely do not blame her for, just to be clear-"

"Thank you," Cosmo said. "Just like I do not blame you for ripping out my eye just a minute ago."

Blaze quickly moved on. "I'm not exactly inclined to trust a stranger right now, especially one clearly steeped in the power of Helheim, which, to be frank, I'm not exactly fond of at the moment. You claim to be a friend of Sagara… But I don't exactly trust that snake either, so how do I know I can trust you?"

"You're right not to trust Sagara," Gaim said firmly. "I consider him… Well, as much of a friend as something like him could be, but I don't trust him in the slightest. Similarly, in your place, I might be somewhat wary as well, though I would be willing to trust until proven wrong… Though, given the sorts of things you've gone through, and the sort of person you are, I understand that might not be a viable viewpoint for you. If it helps, however, consider this: I did not seek the Golden Fruit on my world willingly, and only claimed it because there was no other option, because everyone else after it intended to use its power to wipe out the world or worse… And once I had it, instead of remaking the world in my image, I chose to leave it as it was and instead migrated to a new world, one empty and barren of life, so that I could start over and leave the world of my birth in peace."

"You… All that power, and you just… You LEFT your world in the state it was in?!" Dark Oak asked incredulously. "You didn't even TRY to mend the damage that the war instigated by the Helheim incursion caused?!"

"Very irresponsible," Nega said without a hint of irony.

"Of course I did something," Gaim argued. "When I left my world, I took every trace of Helheim with me. I trusted my friends and the rest of my people to be able to take care of things in my absence, and for the most part, that faith has been validated."

"… Incredible. That is not an option I knew was even possible," Dark Oak murmured, intrigued.

"I think I'm actually the first one who tried that, honestly," Gaim admitted. "Certainly surprised a lot of people, I'll tell you that."

"Nor do I imagine that it is one that many others have chosen after you," Dark Oak intuited. "And it is certainly not one that I will choose, once I claim the Fruit. I want to save MY world, not just start over somewhere else!"

Gaim sighed in frustration. "I've seen far too many people like you, who have done far worse things in the name of 'saving the world.' Many people I used to call friends, including my closest rival, were the same way. It didn't end well for any of them. In fact, you'd be astonished how many people who claimed the Golden Fruit and used it to remake the world in their image sorely regretted it afterwards." He glanced at Blaze. "Which makes the fact that you wish to conquer and reshape your world using your own power intriguing. Normally, I'd be opposed to that sort of thing… But considering that you don't want to use any reality-warping 'shortcuts' and your ideals and vision are apparently appealing enough for almost this entire country to get behind you, I'm not so certain. I think that rival I mentioned might have approved."

"I will take that as a compliment," Blaze said. She regarded the tiger for a moment, and then nodded. "So long as you don't intend to turn on me and try to take the Fruit for yourself, or kill me to 'save' this world from my ambitions, I think I would be willing to work with you…for now. I'm sure I could take this foe on by myself, but…I suppose a little help wouldn't be remiss."

Gaim smiled. "I will do my best to prove your trust in me is not unwarranted."

"Well, this is all well and good, but I don't think two against one is exactly fair, now is it?" Nega sneered.

"Considering that you planted a bomb in my friend's head and tried to blackmail me into surrendering using it, I don't think you're exactly one to talk about fair," Blaze snarled.

"There's always someone like Ryoma…" Gaim muttered darkly.

"Who?" Blaze asked in confusion.

"Let's just say your floating friend there isn't the first mad scientist I've run into who figured out how to harness the power of Helheim relatively safely and had zero scruples whatsoever," Gaim said bitterly.

"So I'm not the first to do something like that? Well, that's rather disheartening…" Nega grumbled. "Regardless, I think it's only fair to even the odds a little… Excellency, I believe that little project I've been working on will be sufficient?"

"Do as you wish, Nega," Dark Oak said dismissively. "I do not care how many opponents I must defeat, so long as the Fruit is mine in the end!"

Nega chuckled sinisterly. "Excellent…" He pressed a button on his dashboard, and the wall behind what was left of the throne split open to reveal a passage leading deeper into the fortress. "Blaze the Cat! Interloper! This path leads into the crown of the Doom Tree, where the Golden Fruit awaits! Let's see who makes it there first, shall we?" Cackling, he flew his hovercraft and the passage.

"Blaze! Gaim! Follow if you dare, and we shall settle this once and for all!" Dark Oak declared, hovering off the ground and gliding backwards after Nega.

Blaze glanced at her new ally. "Shall we?"

"Allow me to change into something a little more fitting," Gaim said, placing a large black metal buckle with a socket in front and what looked like a large knife positioned to one side of it onto his waist, a band shooting out from the side and wrapping itself around his body to form a belt. He produced what looked like a strange stylized padlock with an orange on the front, popping it open. "Henshin!"

" _ **ORANGE!"**_ The unseen announcer declared.

Gaim slammed the lock into the socket on his belt and clicked it into place.

" _ **LOCK ON!"**_

Gaim pressed down on the knife, 'cutting' through the orange and causing its front to flip down, a shimmering round hologram of a sword briefly appearing.

" _ **SOIYA!"**_

A crack opened and a giant metal orange descended onto Gaim's head, his shining white armor transforming into a dark blue and gold undersuit and cape disappearing, with a sword of some kind hanging from the belt on his left hip.

" _ **ORANGE ARMS!"**_

In a burst of orange juice, the giant orange unfolded to form armor over Gaim's shoulders, chest, and back, revealing that his head was now covered in a full helmet with yellow fins on the side, an orange visor, a faceplate, and a crest somewhat resembling a curved blade on his forehead.

" _ **IN THE SPOTLIGHT ON STAGE!"**_

"This is my stage!" Gaim declared dramatically.

Blaze blinked. "… That's the third time I've heard someone say that phrase. What does it even mean?"

"The third?" Gaim asked, taken aback. "But that's MY catchphrase…"

…

"What DOES that mean?" Amy wondered.

"As I later learned, before he became… Well, an armored space god, Gaim used to be a dancer. His catchphrase is a holdover from those days, to signify that he has taken the field, or rather, the stage," Blaze explained.

"Ah, so he used to be a performer! Interesting," Rouge commented.

"How's a guy go from being a dancer to a space god?" Knuckles wondered.

"The same way a regular kid can become a superhero, I suppose," Sonic said. "These things just…happen, sometimes." The others murmured and nodded in agreement.

…

"You look very… Orange," Cosmo said, sounding a little dizzy. "Though that might be the shock from losing an eye talking."

Blaze frowned in concern. "You should probably get some medical attention. Though I can't imagine that'll be easy to find in a place like this…"

Gaim gestured, and a crack opened, but instead of leading to Helheim forest, it showed the interior of Cosmo's tent. "This should get you outside and back into your camp. You should be able to find help there, especially since my wife and children should have showed up about now with our army."

"You brought reinforcements?" Blaze asked in surprise.

"What, you didn't think I came here on my own, did you?" Gaim asked. He hesitated. "… Pretty much all of my Army are Inves, though. I imagine that may be a bit of a problem."

Blaze considered this for a moment. "… Do they look like Dark Oak's Inves?"

"Not that much, really," Gaim confessed.

"Then so long as we don't advertise that, it shouldn't be… TOO much of a problem, especially not compared to some of the creatures who joined my cause…" Blaze murmured.

"I'll just tell everyone they're friends here to help," Cosmo promised. "My word should help convince them it's fine. And maybe I won't mention that they are Inves, that'll probably help."

"It would at that," Blaze agreed.

"I'll tell everyone that you and our new friend here are fighting to stop Dark Oak and Nega and end this war for good," Cosmo vowed. "Would you like me to convey a message?"

"Tell them that I have every faith that they can win, and that I will be fighting to my last breath to end this conflict once and for all," Blaze said. She hesitated, then added, "And please give Honey a hug from me, would you?"

"I will," Cosmo promised. "I'll tell her that her mother loves her very much."

"Thank you," Blaze said. Without warning, she surged forward and hugged her friend.

Cosmo blushed. "I-is this the hug you want me to give Honey?"

"No," Blaze said, nuzzling the Seedrian's hair. "This is for you. Thank you for everything, Cosmo. You're the best friend a demonic conqueror could ask for. And I really AM sorry for ripping out your eye."

"That's all right," Cosmo said, hugging her back. "Better an eye then a head, right?"

Blaze chuckled. "I suppose it is, at that."

Reluctantly, they parted. "Give them hell," Cosmo said fiercely.

"I will," Blaze promised.

Cosmo nodded. "I will see you once this is all over, then. Good luck, Blaze." With that, she limped into the crack, which sealed behind her.

"Friends are wonderful, aren't they?" Gaim asked wistfully, a hint of loss in his voice.

"They are," Blaze agreed, not wanting to inquire. "We should probably go. They have a bit of a headstart."

"Not for long," Gaim said, producing another weird padlock. He popped it open and tossed it into the air, and much to Blaze's amazement, it unfolded and expanded, transforming into a silver, black and gold hover bike. Gaim hopped on. "Care for a lift?"

…

"A hover bike, huh?" Vector mused. "Think it could take the Marvelous Queen?"

Blaze frowned. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, hypothetically speaking, if we were ever to try and take Fang in, it might be nice to have a way to counter that sweet ride of his," the crocodile said.

"That sweet, sweet ride," Charmy said longingly.

"Fang completely wiped us out with that thing," Mighty pointed out sourly. "Heck, I'm not sure he really needed it…"

"Still a sweet ride," Charmy insisted. "Definitely better than most of the bikes Shadow rides."

"Bite me, insect," Shadow growled.

"Wouldn't he sting you instead? Bees are more stingers than biters," Knuckles said cluelessly. "Trust me, I know from experience. I learned the hard way not to disturb a beehive just because I wanted some honey…" He shuddered at the recollection of all the horrible, horrible stings. Shadow sighed.

Blaze considered for a moment. "I don't think so, no," she said finally. "From the impression I got of the Dandeliner-"

"The what?" Cream interjected.

"The Dandeliner. That's what that kind of flying bike is called," Blaze explained.

"Great, more flowers…" Knuckles grumbled.

"While the Dandeliner can fly and has a weapon system, it's not that durable. More of a mass-produced vehicle than a tricked-out custom like I suspect Fang has," Blaze explained. "On the other hand, I believe that Gaim himself could probably defeat Fang… Unfortunately, he's not exactly easy to get a hold of, given that he lives on a planet at the furthest edge of a completely different universe from either of ours."

"Darn," Vector grumbled.

"It's probably for the best, anyway," Espio said. "We can't rely on visitors from another dimension taking care of all of our problems… No offense, Blaze."

"None taken," the cat said.

…

Blaze quickly got over her surprise and smirked. "No, I think I can manage on my own."

Gaim nodded as he revved up his bike's engines. "Fair enough."

Blaze crouched, mustering her power. "Before we begin, a question. That's not your final form, is it?"

"No, it's not," Gaim agreed. "Far from it, in fact."

Blaze raised an eyebrow. "May I ask why you haven't gone there right from the beginning?"

"Because this is your story, not mine," Gaim said. "I'm just here to help, not overshadow you. If everything Sagara has told me about you is true, I don't think you'll need my full power unless things get really bad."

Blaze considered this. "While I suppose I should be annoyed by that… I appreciate the gesture. Thank you." She gave her new ally a sharp look. "Of course, if a situation crops up where your true power might be more to our benefit…"

"I won't hold back if it risks getting people hurt," Gaim promised. "I'm not that kind of person."

"Neither am I," Blaze said, relieved. After a moment, she asked, "Incidentally, at your full power… COULD you defeat Dark Oak and Nega by yourself?"

"Yes," Gaim said without a moment's hesitation. "At my current level, there aren't many threats left that can pose a serious challenge to me if I go all out. However, the fact that his power source is similar to mine makes things a little trickier. Not much, but a little. As such, it's nice to have someone else to fight alongside."

"Agreed," Blaze said. "I'll try not to hold you back, then."

"I have no fear of that," Gaim said. "In fact, if you manage to fulfill your ambitions, I fully expect you to surpass me someday."

Blaze grinned savagely. "That is a day I greatly look forward to. Shall we?"

"Let's ride," Gaim said, revving his bike.

With a rumble, the hover bike rose into the air and shot into the passage at the back of the room, Blaze taking off in a flash and burst of flames, racing alongside him as they chased after their foes. The corridor was long, but at the speed they were moving they reached the end in a matter of moments, finding themselves in an absolutely massive shaft stretching miles above their heads and going deep into the earth, a huge wooden chamber covered in vines and Helheim plants, a corkscrew ramp winding its way up from where they were standing into the tallest reaches of the Doom Tree.

Dark Oak was waiting for them, hovering in the great space taking up the center of the shaft. "There you are," the warlord sneered. "You took longer than I expected. If you'd kept me waiting for much longer, I might have started without you."

"I'm surprised you didn't already," Blaze quipped. "What happened to this being a race for the Golden Fruit?"

"Nega needed to finish setting a few things up," Dark Oak explained. "Plus, I wouldn't have been satisfied if we began before you had a chance to catch up."

"How sporting of you," Blaze drawled sarcastically.

"And where IS Nega?" Gaim asked.

As if in response to his question, the great wooden shaft started rumbling. Maniacal laughter echoed up the height of the chamber as a massive yellow and black mechanical Dragon rose from the pit below. Its body shape was more serpentine than the dragons Blaze had hatched, however, made of large segments attached to each other by flexible joints, red spines growing in double rows down the back, weapons emplacements bristling from the sides, a pair of large fan-like wing-shaped thrusters growing from about the midpoint, a pair of claws about two thirds of the way up its body with large silvery orbs orbiting them, and an elongated reptilian head with massive fangs, a pair of whisker-like cables ending in barbs trailing from the snout, and a bubble cockpit placed between the eyes in which Eggman Nega could be seen, cackling with glee. "Behold, my latest creation!" The mad man boomed, the speakers built into the Dragon's body causing his voice to reverberate throughout the tree. "The Nega Egg Dragon!"

"I've seen bigger," Blaze and Gaim said the same time, unimpressed, then glanced at each other in surprise.

"You have?" Gaim asked.

"I killed a huge ancient Dragon in the heart of a volcano a few months ago. It was a mercy kill," she said quickly. "And I've sworn to raise its children as my own."

"I once encountered a giant undead T-Rex whose head could split open to reveal a giant human skull that was the leader of an evil kingdom of the dead that wanted to turn my birth planet inside out, so that they could live again and everyone else would die, but was stopped by a giant robot train/dinosaur piloted by some rather colorful friends of mine while I fought the father of the ghost boy whose powers they were using to invert the planet who was helping them because they promised his son would be brought back to life and his family would be reunited if their plans succeeded," Gaim said.

…

"… Wait, what?" Asked a dumbfounded Vector.

"Yeah, that's pretty much how I felt the first time I heard it, too," Tails said.

"Okay, I'll admit our own adventures can be pretty weird at times, but that… Is something else," commented a perplexed Shadow.

"The universe he comes from is apparently a pretty lively place," Blaze admitted.

"How were they going to use a ghost boy to turn the planet inside out? I'd have figured you'd need something like an evil Eldritch abomination to do that," said a confused Knuckles.

Espio nodded. "Eggman certainly did."

"When he was alive, the boy was angry that his mother had to cancel plans to go on a trip with him because of work, so he texted her a photo of himself holding a sign saying he hated her, then he ran out in traffic and got killed, and his sorrow for those being the last words he said to her (more or less) was so great he wanted to turn them inside out. So he came back as a ghost. With the power to turn things inside out," Blaze said slowly, somewhat embarrassed.

"That's so sad!" Cream cried.

"And… Strange," said a confused Espio.

"Well, we've probably run into stranger things," Shadow said.

"Like what?" Amy asked.

"One time, Knuckles baked himself into a birthday cake for me," Rouge said. "And it was a total accident, too. Which is a shame, because it would've been a rather nice surprise otherwise."

"Baking is hard…" The echidna muttered.

…

Blaze stared him blankly for a moment. "… I'm… Not sure that counts as a Dragon," she said slowly, not sure how else to respond to that.

"Well, I've also fought Dragon-like Inves, but they aren't as big," Gaim admitted.

"Likewise," Blaze said.

Nega scowled. "The two of you could at least PRETEND to be impressed…"

"Well, I'm sure neither of us has seen a killer robot as large as that before," Blaze said politely.

"Actually, a friend and I once destroyed an evil living mechanical planet that was attempting to assimilate both my birth planet and the new world I'd created using the power of the Golden Fruit," Gaim said. "Does that count?"

"… NO!" Nega shouted angrily.

Blaze stared at the warrior blankly. "… And here I thought _I_ was experienced…" She muttered.

…

"Wait, he destroyed a PLANET?!" Shadow interjected, incredulous.

"With a friend," Blaze pointed out.

"HOW?" Omega asked, clearly and worryingly intrigued.

"They kicked it, I believe," Blaze said.

Everyone stared at her. "They… Kicked it?" Amy asked slowly.

Blaze nodded. "Yes, that seems to be how they finish off most enemies back where he comes from."

Rouge looked down at her feet and grimaced. "And here I thought being able to drill through solid metal feet-first was impressive… I think I'm going to need to do some more training."

"A living mechanical planet that assimilates worlds? What, was it the Borg or something?" Vector asked.

"No, Megahex-the living planet-was stronger," Blaze said. "I doubt Gaim would have actually been KILLED by something like the Borg."

Cream gasped. "Gaim's dead?!"

"WAS dead. He got better," Blaze said.

"… How?" Asked the baffled Mighty.

"He backed himself up on something. Not too different from an extra life, really," Blaze said.

"Oh, that makes sense," Knuckles said.

"I'm not sure it does," Shadow said.

"I'm not sure I care," Espio said.

"I just want to hear the story!" Charmy complained.

…

"Enough of this! This has dragged on for too long. It is time to end this, Blaze!" Dark Oak declared.

The cat narrowed her eyes. "I quite agree." She glanced at Gaim. "I'm not going to insult you by asking if you will be okay handling Nega on your own. All I ask is that you leave Dark Oak to me."

Gaim nodded. "No problem. But, if you DO need a hand…"

"You'll be the first to know," Blaze promised. She pointed a finger at Dark Oak. "Dark Oak! This ends now! And this time, I will destroy you so thoroughly there won't even be ASHES left to regenerate from!"

"And I will show you what comes of abusing the powers of Helheim, Nega!" Gaim declared.

"Let's see if you can back up those words," Dark Oak said with a chuckle, teleporting away in a swirl of leaves and reappearing above the ramp, then warping away again, reappearing higher up the slope.

"Get back here!" Blaze snarled, dashing up the ramp after her foe, leaving trails of flame in her wake.

"Let's see how that little ride of yours compares to my Dragon!" Nega cackled, his mecha opening its mouth and emitting a chamber-shaking roar before turning its head upwards and flying towards the top of the shaft, its long sinuous body spiraling behind it.

"I'm always up for a challenge," Gaim said, gunning his bike's motor before shooting after the Dragon with a savage mechanical roar.

Dark Oak kept teleporting his way further up the ramp, but with her speed, Blaze was able to catch up to him rather quickly, the villain only able to stay ahead of her by periodically warping in between bursts of floating backwards at impressive speeds. "If you're trying to beat me in a race," Blaze snarled. "Don't expect to win!" Flames engulfed her hands, and she started flinging fireballs at Dark Oak.

"Ah, but I'm not _trying_ to beat you in a race," Dark Oak sneered. "I'm just trying to beat you, period!" He teleported several times in rapid succession to avoid the fireballs. Blaze, thinking quickly, changed her aim, leading her shots so that they'd hit Dark Oak just as he rematerialized. He grunted as the projectiles impacted against his armor. "Was that all? I barely felt that! Now, can the same be said for you?"

He flicked his wrists, and a pair of dimensional cracks opened, two handguns with barrels like Gatling guns and adornments resembling grapes embossing the sides falling out and landing in his hands.

" _ **BUDOU RYUHOU!"**_

Pulling back the hammers, Dark Oak opened fire on Blaze, purple Dragon-shaped projectiles blasting out of the gun barrels at rapid speed and shooting towards Blaze. Her reflexes kicking in, she zigzagged across the ramp, doing her best to evade the shots and make it harder for her foe to get a bead on her. Even so, there were a few very close calls, since the shots seemed to not only have a limited homing capability but an explosive aspect as well, throwing up bursts of purple energy whenever they struck anything, be it the floor, wall, or each other. Chuckling, Dark Oak pulled back harder on the hammers, causing golden energy coils to spiral up the lengths of his barrels, combining with purple grape-like spheres expelled from the sides of the guns to form a pair of massive energy balls.

" _ **GRAPE SQUASH!"**_

With a squeeze of the trigger, he fired, the balls exploding into hundreds of Dragon-shaped projectiles which filled the air between him and Blaze, too many for even her to dodge around.

So, she didn't bother. Hands flaring up, her arms shot forwards again and again, faster than the eye could see, snatching up every energy bullet that came her way, the flames in her hands surging with every projectile she grabbed. Once she had so many that her hands were completely invisible beneath the roiling waves of purple fire, she slammed her fists together, turning the flames into the more customary red-orange she was used to, and hurled a massive ball of fire at Dark Oak. The overlord rapid-fired the ball with his guns, blowing it apart in a massive explosion…

Which Blaze shot through,, a Fire Claw aimed right for Dark Oak's chest. At the last second, he teleported away, reappearing behind her, flinging his guns away as a pair of new cracks opened up and a pair of daggers with a strawberry emblem on the blades flew into his hands.

" _ **ICHIGO KUNAI!"**_

He thrusted one of the blades forwards, aiming for her back. Before the dagger could be buried in her flesh, Blaze pirouetted in the air, flames blasting out from her and knocking the kunai out of Dark Oak's hand. Twisting about to grab a dagger as it flew through the air, she landed on the ground, skidded a bit, then launched herself back into the air with a blast of flames. Dark Oak immediately teleported away, but she spun about and flung the kunai directly behind her. Just as she predicted, Dark Oak rematerialized just in time for the kunai to bury itself up to the hilt in his chest orb. As he grunted in surprise, Blaze landed, skidded once more, then once more launched herself upwards in a burst of flame, slamming into the kunai's pommel, causing it to explode in a burst of cherry juice and crack the orb.

"Hmmph… Not bad… But that's still just a scratch!" Dark Oak said dismissively, flinging his other kunai way and preparing to summon another weapon.

"Enough scratches can add up to quite a lot over time," Blaze reminded him, brandishing her claws. "Let's see how many more I can put into you, shall we?"

Meanwhile, Gaim was chasing after the Nega Egg Dragon, opening fire on the giant machine with his Dandeliner's blasters. While his bike's shots struck true, they only caused cosmetic damage to the great wyrm's metal hide. "Is that all you've got? Let me show you some REAL firepower!" Nega boasted, the gun emplacements mounted on the sides of the dragons swiveling backwards and opening fire, Nega twisting his machine about through the air so that as many cannons at his creation's serpentine hide as possible were shooting at the armored Rider.

Gaim took one hand off the controls of his ride to draw his orange slice-shaped Daidaimaru blade, swinging it rapidly through the air to deflect as many of the energy bolts as he could while continuing to steer around the rest. Unfortunately, a few shots got through, despite his best efforts, and small explosions wracked the vehicle as plumes of smoke and flame started emitting from its sides. He sighed in exasperation. "Really need to get a more durable model one of these days…"

Nega cackled as the Nega Egg Dragon swooped in for the kill. "So much for showing me what happens to those who abuse Helheim's power! Looks like you're all talk, after all, Gaim!"

"Hardly," Gaim said, steering his faltering vehicle right for Nega's cockpit.

"Wh-what?! What are you…GAH!" Nega yelled in alarm, reflexively jerking his robot's head out of Gaim's flight path. The smoldering hoverbike shot past…

But Gaim jumped off the vehicle as it passed over the dragon's back, producing two more of those strange fruit shaped locks. One he threw downwards, the other he clicked open.

" _ **PINEAPPLE!"**_

He popped out the Orange lock in his belt, slamming the new one in its place.

" _ **LOCK ON!"**_

He pressed down on the knife, 'cutting' it open, causing a new hologram to briefly appear.

" _ **SOIYA!"**_

A dimensional crack opened over his head, and a familiar-looking giant metal pineapple descended onto his head as his armor vanished in a spray of orange juice.

" _ **PINEAPPLE ARMS!"**_

In a shower of pineapple juice, the pineapple unfolded outwards, forming armor similar to that worn by Red Pine when he powered up, a ball and chain identical to the one the evil general had wielded materializing in the Rider's hands.

" _ **PULPERIZE AND DESTROY!"**_

…

"Wait… Wasn't that Red Pine's thing?" Asked a confused Knuckles.

"Gaim had it first. Like he said, Nega isn't the first person who's tried to weaponize Helheim fruit," Blaze explained.

…

As Gaim descended, the first Lockheed he'd tossed out unfolded outwards to become a more conventional white and red motorcycle. He landed on it just as the bike landed on the Dragon's back, revving it into gear and driving along the surface of the serpentine machine.

"H-hey, what do you think you're doing?! Get off of there!" Nega snarled, shaking his robot's coils in the attempt to fling the hero off.

"Not until I've finished!" Gaim said, practically defying gravity as he drove his motorcycle down the length of the Dragon, turning into each curve and somehow managing to steer around any humps or dips, riding out the metal waves like a pro. He swung his ball and chain over his head before flinging it behind him, the spiked ball getting lodged between two spines, the chain trailing behind the Rider without visible end as he continued on his way.

"STOP THAT!" Nega snarled, losing his temper. He turned the Dragon back on itself, so that he could fire low-power lasers and launch missiles from his cockpit, projectiles raining down along the undulating length of the mecha's form as he tried to hit the irritating gnat zigzagging down his back, dragging that chain along the way, wrapping it around his creation's form. Despite his best efforts, he couldn't seem to land even a glancing blow on the Rider…

But he didn't need to. It was only a matter of time until the inevitable happened, and Gaim ran out of road. Nega cackled gleefully as Gaim reached the end of his Dragon's body, flicking the tip of his tail to send him flying…

But Gaim, rather than panicking, yanked on his chain, which seemed to have finally gone taut. Abruptly, the pineapple-shaped spiked ball broke free from its resting place, digging into the dragon's metal hide as it was dragged along the length of chain wrapped so tightly around the machine's serpentine form, ripping a huge gash spiraling around the length of the mecha's frame, minor explosions bursting all over the machine's body as it tore through weapons emplacements, thrusters, and even smashed through part of one wing. "GAH! What the-"

"You didn't think I did that for no reason, did you?" Gaim asked as the pineapple finally returned to his hand, shaking off a few pieces of metal that had gotten stuck on its spikes. He jumped out of the seat of his doomed motorcycle, tossed a lock that turned into another hoverbike which he landed in, and swapped his pineapple lock for one more closely resembling a strawberry.

" _ **STRAWBERRY! LOCK ON! SOIYA!"**_ The omnipresent voice shouted as he slammed the new lock into place and cut it open.

A dimensional crack opened over his head and a giant strawberry descended on his head as his current armor vanished in a spray of pineapple juice.

" _ **STRAWBERRY ARMS!"**_

The strawberry unfolded outwards to form new armor, the bottom and top of the strawberry positioned over his shoulders, with the rest covering his front and back, and a pair of red triangular fins jutting from the sides of his head, while a green metal sprig rose from the top of his head. A pair of kunai manifested in his hands.

" _ **SHUSHUTTO SPARK!"**_

"Throwing knives? What are those supposed to do?" Nega sneered.

"Why don't I show you?" Gaim said as he did a flyby of the Dragon, dodging projectiles as he flung kunai after kunai into the lengthy gash his pineapple had torn into its length, having a seemingly never-ending supply of the blades, each perfectly hitting its mark…

And having no visible effect. "Ha! Is that all-" Nega started, only to be cut off when every kunai abruptly exploded. Each explosion was small, but considering they blew up right in the middle of exposed circuitry and superstructure and other delicate equipment, the damage was exponentially increased, bigger and bigger blasts erupting out from the initial impacts in a cascading chain reaction as more and more vital systems were overloaded and destroyed. Nega cried in rage and alarm as his marvelous machine was consumed in flames. Fire suppression systems and safety countermeasures kicked in to put out the myriad blazes, but not before the damage had been done: a huge scorched jagged smoldering rift wound its way along the serpentine length of the Dragon's body, still spewing sparks and a little smoke; several of the weapons emplacements had exploded; and one of the wings was only barely still attached to the rest of the body. The Dragon was still flying thanks to multiple redundant backup systems, but it was far from peak condition, and it showed. "You… YOU… _YOU'LL PAY FOR THAT_!" Nega howled, livid.

"Oh, but I've just begun," Gaim said, popping the lock out of his belt again and producing another one.

" _ **WATERMELON! LOCK ON! SOIYA!"**_ The ubiquitous voice shouted as he slammed the new lock into place, jumping off his bike as a crack appeared in front of him, and an absolutely MASSIVE metal watermelon rolled out. It unfolded to allow Gaim into its top, changing around him to create a suit of powered armor with a pair of large green wing thrusters allowing for flight, a protective harness over his upper body to hold him in place, big blade-like 'feet,' and oversized hands with what looked like blasters for fingertips.

" _ **WATERMELON ARMS! BIG BALL BIG BANG! GYRO MODE!"**_

"Just how many of those do you have?!" Asked an incredulous Nega.

"You'd better hope you don't see them all," Gaim growled as he opened fire, shooting seed-like bullets from his suit's fingertips as he strafed the Dragon. "Because I doubt you'll live to tell the tale."

Meanwhile…

" _ **KAGEMATSU! BANASPEAR!"**_

With a gesture from Dark Oak, dozens of cracks opened. Several yaris with pinecone-shaped additions below the blade shot through the air towards Blaze, while a lance somewhat resembling a peeled banana landed in the warlord's hand, and he drove it into the ground, causing banana-shaped energy projections to start erupting from the ground without warning, creating a deadly field of both vertical and horizontal attacks for the feline to evade. Blaze narrowed her eyes at the bullet (or rather, yari and spear) hell before her, but didn't slow down in the slightest, fleetly sidestepping around the banana spikes as they burst out of the ground before and around her, gracefully pirouetting, backflipping, and twirling through the air to squeeze through the narrow gaps between the hurtling yaris and the banana protrusions, only barely managing to avoid getting skewered or grazed by the blades. Getting an idea as she performed another expert flip, she snatched one of the yaris out of the air as it breezed by her, twirling it in front of and around her as she continued running through the bananas, her stolen weapon serving as an improvised shield to deflect and knock away the other yaris still shooting towards her, giving her a bit more breathing room to maneuver.

Dark Oak chuckled. "So, that's how you want to play it, is it?"

" _ **MELON DEFENDER!"**_

A crack opened and a large shield with blades at the bottom and a texture resembling the skin of a cantaloupe flew into his free hand. Holding it and his lance before him, he launched forwards in a horseless joust, cape billowing behind him. Narrowing her eyes when she realized what he was up to, Blaze darted through the last of the banana spikes and charged to meet him, yari lowered to point at her opponent. The space between them was rapidly eaten up as the two approached each other at incredible speeds, neither showing any sign of dodging. At the last second, just before she could get skewered on the spear, Blaze took a half-step to the side and thrusted her yari forwards, embedding it in Dark Oak's shield. "And what was that supposed to-" he started, only to be cut off when she used her grip on the weapon to flip on top of it, then use it as a springboard to launch up and over the shield. Flames engulfing her, she surged downwards in a strike which smashed into the top of the warlord's head, stunning him and sending him stumbling a few steps back, dropping his weapons.

Blaze landed, then immediately surged forwards in a Boost Dash, slamming into the startled Dark Oak's chest and smashing him into the wall at an angle, so that instead of simply burying him in the wall he was dragged along its length as she kept up her fiery dash, sparks flying from where his armor met the wood, bits of it being torn off along with his cape. Flailing desperately with the free hand not being dragged along the wall, he called up the only weapon he could think of to help him.

" _ **WALNUT BOMBER!"**_

A pair of massive orange metal fists flew out of a crack. One of them struck the wall and shattered as it tried to fit itself onto the hand pinned to the warlord's body, but the other fit itself like a glove (which, I suppose, it sort of was) around his free hand. He swung his fist down on Blaze's head, intending to crush her skull. Catching the movement out of the corner of her eye, she disengaged at the last second, backflipping away before she could get hit, the massive fist smashing into the ground hard enough to crater it. Dark Oak grunted as he staggered to his feet, looking down at the right half of his armored body, which had sustained a significant amount of damage from being sideswiped along the wall, in annoyance. Raising his armored fist again, he prepared to take another swing at Blaze…

When suddenly there was a shudder and groan, cracks zigzagging away from the crater where Dark Oak had punched the ground. Blaze's eyes widened in alarm, and Dark Oak chuckled and quickly teleported away as that section of the ramp started collapsing. Using her super speed, Blaze was able to nimbly leap from crumbling chunk of path to crumbling chunk quickly, landing on solid ground in no time. Unfortunately, that ground turned out not to be quite a solid she would've liked, as it began to collapse beneath her feet as well. Alarmed, she started running at top speed, the ramp falling away into darkness behind her.

Dark Oak reappeared in front of her, cackling cruelly as he warped all over the place to taunt her. "Let's make this a bit more interesting, shall we?"

"It's not interesting enough already?" She snapped back.

"Hardly!" Dark Oak replied

" _ **DONKACHI!"**_

A crack opened, and a warhammer resembling an acorn flew into Dark Oak's hands. With a chuckle, he tossed it into the air, and in a puff of smoke it expanded to at least 10 times its original size, hovering in the air above Blaze, eclipsing her in its shadow. She groaned. "Oh great, I see where this is going…"

Dark Oak swung his arm downwards, and the hammer mimicked his motion, smashing down at Blaze, who quickly sidestepped the attack without slowing down, not wanting the collapse of the ramp to catch up with her. Dark Oak raised his arm back up and brought it down again and again, and the hammer again mimicked his motions, smashing down repeatedly in an attempt to crush the cat, who always managed to evade the attack just in time. "…Hmm… Perhaps I should spice this up even further…"

"You really don't have to!" She grunted, dodging the hammer blow once again.

"Oh, but I insist!" Dark Oak said, extending his arms to his sides.

" _ **KIWI GEKIRIN!"**_

Two cracks opened, and a pair of wind and fire wheels resembling kiwi slices flew into his hands. Charging them up with green energy, he hurled the blades away from him. Blaze tensed, keeping an eye on the blades while making sure not to stay under the hammer's shadow for too long…

And much to her surprise, the wheels didn't go anywhere near her. Instead, they flew into the ramp ahead of her, digging into the thick wood, sparks flying as they spun through it in a jagged zigzag pattern before eventually bursting out in a shower of wood chips and flying back into Dark Oak's hands. There was a deep groan, and suddenly massive chunks of the ramp fell away, leaving only an incredibly narrow, incredibly twisting path with absolutely no room to maneuver or dodge. "… Oh, _come on!"_ Blaze snarled, realizing she would have no choice but to run out onto that incredibly precarious path, lest she tumble into the abyss.

"I'm honestly curious to see how you get out of this one, Miss Blaze," Dark Oak said, raising his hand and the hammer as Blaze dashed out onto the winding path.

"You may just get that wish," she growled, thinking quickly.

Dark Oak's hand swung down, and the hammer dropped…

And at the last second, Blaze surged forwards in a Burst Dash, making it out from under the hammer's shadow just before could crush her, shattering the already-weakened wood behind her. As the impact caused the tiny path she was already standing on to start to collapse as well, she shot upwards in a blast of flames, grabbing onto the handle of the hammer and using her momentum to lift it into the air with her, its weight a bit of a strain even for her demonic strength. Before she could lose her grip, she let out a mighty yell and swung the hammer over her head, bringing it down on the startled Dark Oak. The warlord was so surprised by this incredible feat that it didn't even occur to him to teleport…

" _ **MELON DEFENDER!"**_

… Which is why he summoned his shield once more, enlarging it to be at least half again as big as he was. The hammer's head slammed into the shield and rebounded, tumbling end over end until it hit the wall and bounced off, falling into the pit. Dark Oak lowered the shield…

And Blaze slammed into him with a Fire Claw, punching and kicking the startled king again and again with flaming fists and feet as their momentum carried them through the air, slamming into the head of the Nega Egg Dragon—who hadn't seen it coming since Nega had been in the middle of a dogfight with Gaim-knocking it for a loop.

"Now's my chance!" Gaim declared, flying his watermelon rig higher into the air.

" _ **YOROI MODE!"**_

His armor reconfigured itself around him, changing from a flying machine to a massive suit of green mecha armor resembling a samurai, wielding a double-bladed sword. He raised his sword over his head and let out a battle cry as he plummeted downwards towards the Nega Egg Dragon, unable to fly in this form. Eggman Nega managed to recover just in time to see the descending giant warrior, yelped in alarm, and tried to maneuver his mecha out of the way. Unfortunately, while he managed to avoid getting a giant sword through his head, Gaim still managed to cleave through his dragon's damaged wing, sending it falling into the pit.

" _ **GYRO MODE!"**_

He quickly shifted his suit back into its flying configuration before he could fall too much further and fired a volley of bullets directly upwards, damaging the Dragon further. "GAH! THAT'S ENOUGH!" Nega screamed furiously, the Dragon opening its mouth, gathering power, and firing a MASSIVE laser down at Gaim. The armored hero managed to barrel roll out of the way in time, and the beam shot into the lightless depths of the chasm below, striking the distant bottom with an impact that shook the whole tree, a huge pillar of fire blasting upwards briefly from the resulting explosion that nearly incinerated all four combatants. "Dark Oak! I think maybe it's time we switched dance partners!"

"I-ungh! Couldn't agree-gah! More!" Dark Oak grunted as Blaze snarled and hissed as she viciously clawed as his armor, eventually managing to rip her off and fling her at a wall, the impact stunning her as she slid down and landed on the safety of the wooden ramp, dazed and struggling to catch her breath. Rather than press the advantage, Dark Oak turned and flew towards Gaim, passing the Nega Egg Dragon going in the opposite direction, reaching out a hand to slap one of the dragon's claws to tag out.

"All right, Rider," Dark Oak snarled as he approached Gaim. "Let's see which of us truly has better control over the powers of Helheim, shall we?"

"If you insist," Gaim said, disengaging the Watermelon lock from his belt, causing his armor to vaporize in a shower of watermelon juice. As he started to fall, he quickly tossed out another lock to summon a hover bike and changed back into his Orange Arms suit.

"Back to that thing already? From how you were talking, I assumed you had more in your arsenal," said a disgusted Dark Oak.

"Oh, but I do," Gaim said, producing a new, fancier-looking lock resembling a lemon and popping it open. "I'm just setting things up for the next act."

" _ **LEMON ENERGY!"**_

He popped open a panel on the side of his belt buckle, revealing a second socket which he inserted the lock into before pressing down on the knife, cutting both of them open.

" _ **LOCK ON! SOIYA!"**_

As the hologram briefly flashed before his waist, a crack opened over his head, and his Orange armor folded back up and rose up to meet a large metal lemon descending from the rift, fusing with it.

" _ **MIX!"**_

The lemon landed on Gaim's head and unfolded outwards, covering his front and back in orange and black armor with thick golden trim coming down to his hips, and ornate black shoulder armor, leading him to resemble a samurai archer, especially since the weapon that appeared in his hands looked a lot like a red high-tech bow.

" _ **JIMBER LEMON! HA-HA!"**_

"Two at once?!" Dark Oak stammered, astonished. "Yellow Zelkova was the only one other than myself who managed to do that, and even then it nearly killed him!"

"There is more to Helheim than you or Nega can possibly imagine. You're just scratching the surface," Gaim declared, raising his bow and aiming it at Dark Oak. "I intend to make sure you don't dig any deeper."

"We'll just see about that, won't we?" Dark Oak snarled, extending a hand to the side.

" _ **SONIC ARROW!"**_

A bow identical to the one Gaim was holding appeared in the warlord's hands. He aimed it at his foe, drawing back the string, causing an energy arrow to manifest. Gaim did the same, and the two released their strings the same time, the projectiles colliding in a brilliant yellow explosion.

As Blaze picked herself back up, she found herself cast into a great shadow, and looked up in annoyance to see the Nega Egg Dragon looming over her. "Oh great…" She grumbled.

"I think it's time the two of us tangled, Miss Blaze!" Nega cackled. "I must say, I'm rather vexed that you managed to destroy so much my handiwork in the past… Let's see how you fare against the likes of me! Get a load of this!"

…

"Oh yeah, that brings me back," Sonic fondly reminisced. "The Egg Viper will always hold a special place in my heart for one of the coolest boss battles I've ever had with Eggman…"

…

The dragon's eyes lit up, crackling with energy, and fired a pair of massive laser beams… In opposite directions, slamming into the walls on either side of Blaze and trapping her on a several meter-wide portion of the ramp. Why he didn't just fire the beams at her directly, she didn't know, and decided it would be best not to give him any ideas.

The Dragon roared, and missiles launched from the remaining spines on its back, arcing through the air and homing in on her platform. She started dashing back and forth in what little space she had to run in, using her speed and agility to dodge the missiles as they smashed into the ground and exploded, hurling fireballs at the mecha all the while. The robot flicked its wrists, and the orbs floating around them shot off and spun in a circle before the dragon's face, an energy shield crackling to life between them that absorbed the projectiles, the orbs lighting up and firing bursts of plasma that sent shockwaves of energy rippling out across the ground whenever they impacted, forcing Blaze to get even more flexible and maneuverable to dodge them as well as the missiles.

 _So, that shield can absorb my fire attacks and redirect them back at me_ … She mused. _I wonder what would happen if…_ As she continued gracefully dancing and flipping around, she started throwing fireballs again… But this time, aimed them at the orbs themselves. Since they were spinning, not all of her projectiles landed a hit and got absorbed into the shield and blasted back at her… But quite a few of her fireballs struck true, and those that hit the orbs caused visible, albeit slight, damage to them. _Bingo!_

Abruptly, the orbs separated and went back to revolving around the dragon's claws… And Blaze realized that while she'd been focused on evading and attacking the orbs, the Dragon head opened its mouth and was charging up an attack. A huge energy ball at least 10 times her size came blasting out of the mechanical monster's jaws, and she barely dashed out of the way before it impacted, engulfing nearly two-thirds of her platform in a tremendous explosion. She cursed herself for not noticing it sooner as the blast died down; if it had hit the ground just a few feet closer to the center, she might've been caught between it and the laser barrier, with nowhere to go.

Nega cackled madly, the dragon's whiskers twitching, and suddenly they darted forwards, electricity crackling around the barbs at their tips. Blaze's eyes widened in alarm, and she was forced on the move once more as the tendrils lashed out, trying to impale her on their barbed tips, striking again and again…

Until suddenly, one of the tendrils thrusted with a little too much power, and embedded itself in the floor. "Gack! Curses!" Nega snarled, tugging on the whisker to try and wrench it out.

 _Now's my chance!_ Abruptly, Blaze rushed at the grounded whisker, leaping onto it and grinding down its length towards the Dragon's head.

"H-hey, you can't do that!" Nega protested in alarm, sending electrical pulses down the length of the whisker towards Blaze.

The cat proved that she could, indeed, do that by hopping over each pulse as it came near her until she got close enough to jump off and hurled herself at Nega's cockpit with a Fire Claw, smashing into it with enough force to crack the reinforced glass and rock the head back, ripping out the stuck whisker in the process. "Gah! Why you little-"

Enraged, Nega took control of both his whiskers, causing them to double back on themselves and launch themselves at Blaze, who had landed on the tip of the dragon's nose. Before they could bury themselves in her back, she backflipped, the tendrils shooting under and past her, right towards Nega's cockpit. The madman flinched backwards in alarm as they flew towards him…

And stopped, millimeters away from the glass. "Phew! That was-"

Blaze slammed into the back of one of the barbs with a flying kick, driving it forwards and causing it to smash through the cracked cockpit glass, and it might've pierced the scientist's chest if it hadn't gotten stuck. Screaming in terror and alarm (and trying to ignore how wet his pants had just become), Nega grabbed the controls and started shaking the Dragon's head around, knocking Blaze off, though fortunately she managed to land gracefully back on the platform instead of falling into the pit. "You… You! YOU!" So red with fury that he found himself lost for words, Nega started pushing lots of buttons on his control panel instead. More missiles launched themselves from their silos, and the orbs launched themselves as well, creating a much larger and harder to avoid obstacle as they slammed into the ground, forcing Blaze to quickly detour around their shadows, lest she be struck by them as well as the missiles. However, she made sure that whenever she passed one of the orbs after it had hit the ground, but before it rose back into the air, she lashed out at it with her claws, gouging into the metal.

Eventually, Nega recalled the orbs, forming his spinning energy shield once again while powering up another energy ball in the dragon's mouth. As before, Blaze hurled fireballs at the shield, aiming for the orbs instead of the energy field itself, landing a few more blows… And was satisfied to see cracks and ruptures beginning to form on some of the sphere's surfaces.

Eventually, Nega recalled his spheres, his energy ball fully charged and ready to fire. Just as it launched, Blaze turned and ran towards the back wall, dashing halfway up it, and launching herself away from it in a burst of flames, shooting right towards the massive energy ball. Just before she could collide with it, she flipped around and slammed her feet into it as hard as she could, kicking it back towards Nega. Laughing at her foolishness, Nega formed his shield again, and the energy ball was absorbed into it, the orbs lighting up with tremendous energy as they prepared to discharge…

Only to simultaneously explode, the energy field vanishing in a crackle of static as the remains of the spheres plummeted into the pit. "Wh-what?!" Nega cried in disbelief.

"You should've been paying more attention, Doctor," Blaze sneered. "I knew those spheres were the linchpin for that shield defense of yours, so I went out of my way to attack them. If they had been in perfect condition, they might have been able to absorb and redirect all that energy back at me… But since they WEREN'T in perfect condition, it's really no surprise they couldn't handle that much power."

"That… That's actually very clever," Nega admitted grudgingly. "I might be impressed… If I weren't so filled with _**UNYIELDING RAGE!**_ "

Blaze grinned. "If that's the case," she quipped, hands bursting into flame. "I can't wait to see how you feel once I completely take you apart…"

While this was going on, Gaim and Dark Oak were flying around the central shaft, firing arrows at each other. So far, they seemed to be at a bit of a stalemate, since they were both equally quick on the draw, and both their aims were superb, so no arrow laid a mark on either of their armors because they kept intercepting and destroying the other halfway across the shaft. Dark Oak was starting to get annoyed by this impasse, so he decided to switch things up a bit. He formed an arrow in his bow, charging it up…

And then, the second before he fired it, he teleported behind Gaim and shot the arrow at his back. The Rider barely managed to swerve to the side before it could pierce his shoulder blades, the arrow grazing his shoulder as it streaked past him and exploded against the far wall. Cackling, Dark Oak started wildly teleporting around the shaft, taking a page out of Red Pine's book. Gaim frantically swiveled about, arrow primed and ready to fire, as he struggled to draw a bead on his enemy. Unfortunately, the area was a lot larger than where Blaze had fought Red Pine, the dark lord's weapon was a lot faster than the general's ball and chain, and Dark Oak had the added advantage of three-dimensional space to move about in, making it even harder to figure out where he was in time to avoid an arrow, let alone shoot back. It also probably didn't help that Gaim wasn't nearly as fast as the cat.

As such, it was really only a matter of time until the inevitable happened and one of Dark Oak's arrows struck true, exploding against Gaim's side in a blast that nearly knocked him off his bike, causing him to scream both in pain and alarm as he desperately struggled to remain mounted on his vehicle and keep it from flying into wall. Laughing madly, Dark Oak started teleporting again, even faster, and Gaim knew he would have to switch things up as well.

He disengaged his lemon lock, causing his raiment to disappear in a splash of lemon juice as his orange armor reformed on him. He then produced a new lock resembling a peach and plugged it into the open socket, going through the activation sequence.

" _ **PEACH ENERGY! LOCK ON! SOIYA! MIX!"**_

A new crack opened and a giant metal peach descended, fusing with the orange armor as it flew up to meet it and slamming down on Gaim's head, unfolding to create a new set of armor virtually identical to the one he'd been wearing just seconds ago, except it was in pink.

" _ **JIMBER PEACH! HA-HA!"**_

"And what good is that supposed to do?" Dark Oak sneered.

"You'll find out shortly," Gaim said calmly.

Dark Oak grunted and started teleporting again. Gaim made no attempt to move, hovering in place, head slightly bowed. An energy arrow was notched into his bow, but he was holding it on his lap. _What does he think he's doing_? Dark Oak wondered, perplexed. _Well, whatever it is, let's see if it can protect him from THIS!_

He stopped his teleporting, prepared to fire his arrow…

And suddenly, Gaim whipped his bow up and shot an arrow at the warlord, who was too startled to teleport away in time and got struck in the chest, his own arrow going wild. "Gah! Wh-what the-"

Seeing Gaim drawing back his bow again, Dark Oak quickly started teleporting again as he prepared his next arrow. _How did he know when to shoot?_ He wondered, incredulous. _Surely I wasn't slow enough to give him an opening, was I? Let's see if he can do that again…_

He sped up his teleports, warping all over the chamber, so quickly he was barely visible at any point for more than a blink of an eye before he vanished again. Despite this, Gaim didn't seem particularly bothered, and again notched an arrow into his bow and held it patiently, relaxed. Eventually, Dark Oak judged it time to make another attack attempt and paused long enough to fire an arrow…

Only for Gaim's own arrow to pierce his chest just before he could let loose his own projectile. "Raaaah! How… How did-" The warlord stiffened. "Wait… That new armor of yours! It amplifies your senses and reaction time, doesn't it?"

Gaim nodded. "That's right. My hearing was enhanced enough so that I could know whenever you were about to shoot an arrow at me, as well as where to shoot my own. I'm surprised you figured that out so quickly, usually it takes my opponents a lot longer to realize that."

"That's a very useful ability…" Dark Oak admitted grudgingly. "But let's see how well it holds up against this!" He charged up an arrow in his bow… And KEPT charging, until it looked like he had at least a dozen notched in the weapon at once. He released them… Not at Gaim, but into a crack which appeared right in front of him. With a loud unzipping sound, several dozen cracks opened up to form a sphere around Gaim, and arrows rapidly started unloading from them in every direction, while a laughing Dark Oak kept loosing more and more bolts into the crack before him.

"It can't," Gaim admitted, frantically using his enhanced reflexes and sword to try and deflect as many arrows as he could. "But THIS can!"

When there was a lull in the assault - even Dark Oak couldn't keep it up forever without pause - Gaim again switched out locks, replacing the peach with one resembling a cherry.

" _ **CHERRY ENERGY! LOCK ON! SOIYA! MIX!"**_

A new crack opened and a giant metal cherry descended, fusing with the orange armor as it flew up to meet it and slamming down on Gaim's head, unfolding to create a new set of armor virtually identical to the one he'd been wearing just seconds ago, except it was in red.

" _ **JIMBER CHERRY! HA-HA!"**_

"And what power does this new form grant you?" Dark Oak asked as he started firing arrows into the crack again.

Gaim revved his motorcycle as the cherry parts of his armor started glowing. "Speed."

The arrows shot out of the cracks around him… But as his armor's speed boost ability activated, they seemed to slow down to a crawl, moving with almost inexorable slowness through the air, the wake of displaced air they left behind them actually visible from this perspective. Gaim sped his bike forwards, easily maneuvering around the slow-moving projectiles, navigating past them and the numerous cracks surrounding him, and out into the open air towards Dark Oak, who had clearly realized what was going on and was starting to teleport as his foe raced towards him…

But unfortunately, he wasn't nearly fast enough. Gaim powered up his Sonic Arrow and fired several bolts at the warlord as he approached. Due to the ridiculous speeds he was moving at, he actually zoomed past the arrows almost moments after shooting them, but that didn't bother him. As he drew near Dark Oak, he drew his Musou Saber and slashed out with it as he sped by, cutting through the leaves which had begun to swirl around the warlord and slicing through his armor, canceling his teleportation as he cried out in pain… Then yelled even louder when the arrows struck his chest and exploded, flinging him backwards, allowing Gaim to get in a second hit with his blade as he shot past.

"Ugh..unh… And here… I thought that Blaze was fast…" Dark Oak grunted as he managed to stabilize himself in the air, clutching the gash in his side in pain.

…

"Hey, did that cherry armor make him faster than YOU, Sonic?" Charmy asked.

"No!" Sonic cried indignantly. He paused, and then glanced at Blaze. "… Did it?" She shrugged.

…

"Just how many different armors do you have, anyway?" Dark Oak snarled as he recovered.

"Quite a lot, actually," Gaim admitted. He disengaged both his cherry and orange locks, causing his armor to vanish in a shower of fruit juice, then produced a new one, resembling the orange but larger and bulkier, with a port on the side. "But I'm only going to need a couple more to beat you." He clicked it open.

" _ **KACHIDOKI! LOCK ON! KACHIDOKI ARMS! INTO BATTLE! EI, EI, OH!"**_

As Gaim assumed his strongest form yet, the fight between Blaze and Nega continued to intensify. The enraged mad scientist was not only firing a seemingly endless array of missiles and energy blasts at the feline warrior, but whipping his last remaining whisker around as well, sweeping it across the ground or through the air instead of thrusting it like before. Blaze masterfully and gracefully evaded as many of the attacks as she could while flinging a constant stream of fireballs at the oncoming missiles and the dragon's head, slowly chipping away at its armor and causing Nega to snarl and get more and more frustrated as his mecha steadily kept taking damage while she continued to remain unharmed. "How can you possibly keep this up?!" He snapped finally. "Most people would have tripped up by now, or needed to stop for breath! How are you managing this?!"

"I'm not most people," Blaze shot back, catching the whisker swinging towards her out of the corner of her eye. She backflipped over it, then landed on top of it as it went under her, grinding down its length towards the head of the Dragon.

"Oh no you don't! Not this time!" Nega snarled, flicking the whisker upwards and hurling the startled Blaze into the air. The Dragon opened its jaws and surged to try to catch her in its mouth, the huge energy beams still being projected from its eyes cutting large tracks in the wall of the shaft and slicing through some of the upper reaches of the ramp and part of the far-distant ceiling in the process.

Blaze narrowed her eyes as the Dragon's gaping mouth rushed towards her. Gathering power into her claws, she started rapidly hurling dozens of fireballs into the open jaws. The fireballs burst upon impact, riddling the interior of the mouth with small explosions, until finally one or more of them hit something important, and there was a much larger explosion which rocked the robot and knocked the lower jaw off one of its hinges.

"GAH!" Nega cried in alarm as the Dragon flinched away, shaken by the damage. Blaze shot past the head and landed on the back of one of the mecha's serpentine coils, beginning to run up its length while dodging around the scorched and blasted areas torn open during Gaim's previous attack. Without thinking, Nega pivoted his head down to get her in his sights…

Forgetting in the process that his robot's eyes were still firing lasers, shearing through his machine's lower body and sending a full third of its length tumbling away into the abyss. Swearing in fury, he switched off the lasers and brought the coil Blaze was running on closer to him, the Dragon's head surging down towards it in an attempt to crush her beneath its weight. Blaze somersaulted out of the way of the head just before it could crush her, grabbing onto a protrusion on its side as it lifted back into the air so took her with it. "Wh-where did you go?!" Nega asked frantically, swiveling the Dragon's head here and there to try and spot her.

Instead of answering, Blaze picked her way up the side of the Dragon's head until she reached the top. Nega's eyes widened when she came into view, but didn't even have time to open her mouth before she launched forwards in a Fire Claw, slamming into his cockpit with an explosion which further cracked the safety glass and hurled her backward through the air. She quickly gained control of her flight with a few controlled bursts of fire and neatly landed back on the ramp, smirking to herself as the Dragon's body was wracked with explosions. "You… YOU! THAT DOES IT!"

The Dragon's eyes lit up, firing the massive laser beams on either side of her to hem her in once more… And then they started closing in on towards her with the intent to vaporize her. "I don't know why I didn't just do this in the first place!" Nega sneered. "Let's see you get out of THIS!"

Blaze's eyes widened, her mind racing as she tried to think of a way out of this…

When there was the sound of a large explosion and Dark Oak slammed into the top of the Dragon's head, knocking it downwards and causing the huge beams to shear through the floor of the ramp and keep going down instead of closing in on Blaze. "Gah! Your Majesty! What do you think you're-"

"I think," Dark Oak grunted as he pulled himself up. "It might be time to switch again."

"I've got no problem with that," Gaim said as his hover bike descended into view. His new armor was especially impressive, resembling a shogun rather than a warrior or samurai, orange plates hanging down from his waist to form an armored skirt, plated orange armor covering his arms and chest and back with a large medallion with a curved sword emblem emblazoned on his torso, a pair of orange sashimono flags with his emblem on them rising from his back, and an ornate helmet with elaborate golden horns for a crest covering his head.

Nega eyed Gaim worryingly. "Actually, I think I might-"

"Too bad, no tag backs," Dark Oak said curtly, shoving off from the Dragon's head and flying towards Blaze.

"But-but!" Nega protested desperately.

"Ready for round two, doctor?" Gaim asked, holding up a powerful-looking gun with a disk on the side.

Nega swallowed. "… Oh dear."

"I hope you are ready as well, Blaze!" Dark Oak snarled, manifesting his sword.

"Always-" Blaze started, only to pause as the ground beneath her started trembling. "What-"

With a heavy groan, the platform she was standing on abruptly collapsed, the damage inflicted from Nega's laser beams slicing through it apparently too much for it to handle. She cried out in surprise as she started to fall…

When suddenly, several very thick vines erupted from the wall, twisting and turning their way up and around the length of the shaft. Blaze landed on one of them and immediately started grinding up it. "What the-"

"You're welcome!" Gaim called before turning his attention back to the nervous Nega.

"I don't know whether I should be grateful or annoyed," Dark Oak commented, flying beside the vines as Blaze continued grinding up them. "On the one hand, he saved your life and is using my own tree against me… On the other hand, he gave me another chance to give you the warrior's death you so richly deserve!"

"By the time this is over, I think you'll be leaning a bit more towards 'annoyed,'" Blaze commented, hurling fireballs at him.

Dark Oak chuckled as he teleported out of the way of her projectiles. "We'll see…" He snapped his fingers and several cracks opened.

" _ **PINE IRON! DURI NOKO! KIWI GEKIRIN!"**_

The familiar pineapple-shaped flail, jagged-edged broadswords, and Kiwi slice bladed rings flew out of the cracks by the dozens. The weapons changed form as they flew through the air, the pineapples becoming spiked balls, the swords bladed strips, and the rings… Well, they stayed more or less the same. Instead of flying at Blaze, they instead scattered themselves along the length of the vines, creating a minefield of spikes, blades, and spinning buzzsaws with only narrow gaps in between. Blaze swore as she saw the array of deathtraps laid out before her and quickly started jumping from vine to vine, desperately trying to navigate through the myriad obstacles covering her path. "Gaim, I don't suppose you could provide me with a fresh vine?" Blaze yelled at the Rider, jumping vines to keep from grinding into a string of spiked balls, only to have to switch back almost immediately to avoid some buzzsaws spinning towards her.

"Sorry, I'm a little busy!" He shouted back as he chased after the damaged Dragon, firing shots from his powerful gun at it.

"Don't worry, Blaze," Dark Oak chuckled. "I have every confidence you can make it through this. But why don't we make things just a little MORE challenging?"

"You really don't have to, this is quite challenging enough, thank you!" Blaze said through gritted teeth as she rapidly hopped back and forth between vines with almost no margin of error to spare.

"Oh, but I insist!" Dark Oak said with false politeness, opening more cracks.

" _ **BUDOU RYUHOU!"**_

The twin pistols fell into Dark Oak's hands. He twirled them, cocked them, and then started teleporting about, firing grape bullets at Blaze from every angle, giving her yet another hazard to worry about. _This is getting ridiculous!_ She thought as she desperately tried to divide her attention between grinding, rapidly switching tracks to keep from running into the seemingly endless array of traps covering the vines, and doing so while ALSO dodging Dark Oak's gunshots, which were, of course, trying to drive her right into the very traps she was attempting to avoid. _I can't keep this up forever! Eventually, something's got to give!_

 _So I just have to make sure that something isn't me. But what can I … Ah! Of course! Why didn't I think of that in the first place?_

She tapped into her inner flame, the fire flaring up as she drew upon its power. Flames burst up around her, and with a howl she flung her arms out to sides, unleashing a wave of fire which rushed forwards up the vines, obliterating every trap they came into contact with and clearing the organic grind rails in seconds, leaving them somewhat burnt but still serviceable.

"… Pretty sure that's cheating…" Dark Oak muttered. "Well, you aren't the only one who can do that."

A new crack opened.

" _ **SUIKA SOJINTO!"**_

A gargantuan watermelon dropped down onto the vines far up ahead and started rolling down towards Blaze, the giant vegetable so big it took up all the rails, leaving no escape. "Hey, that's not how that weapon is supposed to work!" Gaim protested.

"I don't care!" Dark Oak snapped back.

Blaze narrowed her eyes as she saw the huge green sphere of doom rolling towards her. _That fire wave trick won't work on something that big, and my regular fireballs aren't strong enough to destroy it… And I don't have time to power up my flame of ultimate Destruction, either._ She grinned savagely. _Looks like I'll just have to take it head on!_

Calling upon her flame again, fire crackling around her, she started rapidly, hopping from vine to vine to vine, gradually picking up speed with each rail switch until she became a fiery blur, zigzagging across the vines as she moved faster and faster towards the watermelon. Dark Oak frowned, uncertain what she was doing. "What are you thinking?" He murmured, curious. "Well, whatever it is, I'd better put a stop to it!"

He started teleporting again, opening fire with his guns once more. Much to his consternation, however, now that there were no more traps littering the vines, there was nothing stopping Blaze from using her reflexes to switch rails every time she was about to get hit by a grape bullet, going even faster in the process with each hop and making it that much harder for him to hit her. The speed boosts were incremental, but they added up over time. Dark Oak was strongly starting to consider throwing out traps again, but knew he didn't have time before the watermelon just ran over them, so was forced to hope that it would do his job for him…

And if not, well, he could always try something else.

The watermelon was upon them. Dark Oak quickly teleported out of the way, while Blaze, moving like a shooting star, boosted right into it.

Dark Oak wasn't certain what he had expected to happen when Blaze and the watermelon collided. For her to be squished, perhaps, albeit unlikely. For the watermelon to explode, quite probably. He most certainly did NOT expect what DID happen to occur: when Blaze slammed into the watermelon, with the force of her fiery speed boost propelling her forwards, she actually PUSHED the watermelon back up the vines, easily rolling it before her even though it was several times her size.

…

"Katamari!" Charmy shouted.

"What?" Asked a confused Blaze.

"Never mind," the bee said. Omega, despite himself, started humming an incredibly catchy tune.

…

The watermelon started picking up speed as Blaze continued rolling it forwards, seeming to shed none of her momentum despite the fact that she was using it to propel a giant orb up a steep incline. As Dark Oak watched in disbelief, too stunned by the impossible sight he was seeing to even think about attacking, Blaze pushed the watermelon up a 'hill' in the rails so hard that it was launched into the air as it went over the crest, soaring through like a huge green balloon.

It took longer than the warlord cared to admit for him to realize that the giant watermelon was hurtling straight towards him. Swearing, he quickly opened a pair of cracks.

" _ **DURI NOKO!"**_

The saw-edged blades flew into his hands, and he slashed them through the air once, twice, three times. There was a pause, and then the watermelon burst before it could slam into him, it's neatly cut chunks flying past him while a torrent of juice splattered him, though he used his cape as a shield to keep most of it from soaking into his armor.

This, unfortunately, turned to be a mistake, for when he removed his cloak from his line of sight he was just in time to see Blaze's Fire Claw right before it slugged him in the face, snapping his head back. She laid into him repeatedly with a flurry of frenzied claw slashes as they flew through the air, eventually slamming into another one of the grind vines. Blaze leapt off just before the impact, neatly landing on the vine and grinding up it, while the less fortunate Dark Oak rolled off and fell into the chasm. Blaze smirked as she continued her grind, hopping rails a few times to build up speed, then leaping off and landing on the ramp once the vine passed close enough to it. She began to run again, certain she wouldn't be alone for long.

She wasn't. In a swirl of leaves, Dark Oak appeared before her, hovering backwards up the ramp to keep a safe distance between them. Blaze noticed with pleasure that his armor was now cracked, dented, and covered in scorch marks, there were several large cracks running through the orb on his face and the fruits on his chest, his cape was shredded, and one of his horns had been broken off. The warlord said nothing for a moment, breathing heavily, as he regarded his foe, and Blaze grinned, gratified to see how much she was wearing him down. "I think," he said after a moment. "It is time for us to end this."

Blaze chuckled savagely. "Bring it."

As the two combatants clashed arms once again, Gaim and Nega continued their dance through the air as well. While the Nega Egg Dragon was severely damaged and losing a good chunk of its tail, ironically, this actually made it somewhat faster and more maneuverable, since there was less of it to tax the engines, beyond the strain on them due to the damage the mecha had sustained already. "Why did you have to stick your nose into this?!" Nega snarled, firing a fusillade from his remaining broadside guns. "This isn't your world! Nothing we do here could possibly have any effect on you!"

"You're right, it wouldn't," Gaim said, scratching the disk on the side of his DJ gun, causing it to make a higher-pitched melody. He pulled the trigger and opened fire, shooting a stream of blasts at machine gun speed, blasting the dragon's projectiles right out of the air and filling the air between them with a string of little explosions. "But a friend asked me to lend a hand, and what sort of a hero would I be if I turned my back on people who needed me?"

"Ha! Some hero!" Nega snarled, twisting the Dragon about and lunging right towards Gaim, who quickly swerved out of the way. Nega expected this, however, and immediately rolled his mecha about, bringing his claws up to swipe at Gaim. The Rider quickly pulled one of the flags from his back and used it to slash through the appendage before it could knock him out of the air, the severed limb falling away. Nega snarled, but by this point he was so angry and his machine already so damaged he wasn't sure he even cared. "Tell me, Gaim, just how many worlds HAVE you saved from Helheim? Other than your own, that is? Where were you when THEY needed you?"

Gaim hesitated for a moment, and then scratched his gun's disk again, causing it to make a sound more medium in pitch. "I wasn't there, not as often as I should have been," he admitted, opening fire again, this time shooting shotgun-like blasts, which broke off chunks of the dragon's hull. "There were plenty of times when maybe I could have intervened… But did not."

"And why's that?" Nega sneered, firing missiles at the Rider while bringing the Dragon back around for another pass. "Because despite all your talk and self-righteousness, you really can't bring yourself to care that much about people you barely know, people you've never met before?"

"No," Gaim said angrily. "That's not it at all!"

"Then why?" Nega taunted, the Dragon's eyes powering up as he prepared to fire the giant lasers. "What makes this world so special that you'd come to it, instead of ignoring it and leaving it to rot like all the others which Helheim has consumed over the centuries?"

Gaim scratched the gun's disk again, this time making a much lower-pitched noise. "I may be a 'space -God,' but that doesn't mean I can do as much as I'd like to," he growled, pointing his gun at the Dragon and starting to squeeze the trigger. "While my power may come from Helheim, that doesn't mean I can control it. It tolerates me, but if it really, REALLY doesn't want me somewhere… Then there just isn't a lot I can do about it. There's lots of justifications I could make up for myself, like how I trust in the inhabitants of those worlds to find a way to save themselves, how I don't want them to become dependent on me or interfere with their development, how I don't want to steal their chance to choose their own fates… But ultimately, all it boils down to is I can't save those worlds because Helheim won't let me. I hate it, but there isn't anything I can do about it, not without potentially jeopardizing the world I've brought into being or the people I care about. In my own way, I am as much a slave of the forest as any Inves." He narrowed his eyes behind his visor. "Which just means that, on the rare occasion when I AM allowed to interfere… I'll fight as hard to save the people of those worlds as I did to save mine!"

He fired his gun almost an instant before Nega fired his lasers, sending a massive cannon-like burst streaking through the air and slamming into one of the Dragon's eyes, causing all the energy it did been building up to backfire and overload, exploding spectacularly and disintegrating a full third of the Dragon's face, as well as dislodging what was left of its lower jaw. Nega howled in rage in terror as his mecha violently flailed about, the laser shooting out of its good eye and sweeping across the far wall, slicing through the grind vines and ramp and causing explosions to erupt across the shaft in its wake. As the mad scientist desperately struggled to put out the small fires igniting in his cockpit and get his controls working again, Gaim removed the lock from his belt and inserted it into a socket on his gun and started squeezing the trigger as he aimed it at the flailing Dragon's remaining wing. A massive amount of orange energy was absorbed into the gun, which he then fired at the wing in the form of an absolutely MASSIVE energy blast, so strong that it ripped the wing right out of its holding and sent it tumbling end over end into the abyss, ripping off several more spines and bits of the dragon's not-so-serpentine form as it went.

With the loss of yet another important engine, the Dragon didn't stop flailing so much as go into freefall, hurtling downwards as a screaming Nega frantically tried to bring auxiliary systems online. Secondary thrusters emerged, with some effort, from hatches along the dragon's body… And failed to ignite. Sweating frantically, Nega tried the tertiary and quaternary thrusters… And much to his relief, those managed to work, though far more than he'd like to fail to come online. He sighed in relief as he managed to stabilize his flight…

And screamed again when he realized he was about to crash into a wall. Pressing buttons and flipping switches frantically, the Dragon stiffened its lengthy body behind it and started spinning like a corkscrew, black and yellow energy crackling to life around it… And when it slammed into the wall, instead of crashing horrifically it, it went THROUGH the wall, drilling into its surface and burrowing into the wood, quickly disappearing from view.

"Huh. I was not expecting that." Gaim cocked his gun and looked around warily. "Now, where are you going to come from-"

With a tortured metallic shriek, the Dragon abruptly burst out of one of the walls and came shooting towards Gaim. Yelping in alarm, he barely managed to swerve out of the way before the Dragon could smash into him, scratching his gun back up to the high-pitched setting and shooting rapid-fire bursts which, unfortunately, didn't seem to be doing a good job of penetrating the aura wrapped around the machine.

As the Dragon burrowed back into the wall, Gaim quickly scratched his gun down to the low-pitched setting and waited. When the Dragon burst out of the wall again, Gaim blasted it in the face. The high-powered projectile managed to penetrate the aura, exploding in the Dragon's face and causing it to flinch out of its charge, hissing in agony, or the equivalent thereof, considering it was just a machine.

"Time to finish this!" Gaim said, whipping out his Musou Sabre and strapping it onto the top of his gun, combining the two into a single weapon. He then once again put his lock in the waiting slot and squeezed the trigger on the combined weapon, powering it up.

" _ **1, 10, 100, 1000, 10,000, 100,000,000, 1000,000,000,000, IMMEASURABLE: KACHIDOKI CHARGE!"**_

Howling a battle cry, he revved his engine and raced towards the stunned Dragon, lashing out with his blade as he approached. Nega squealed in alarm and tried to dodge…

And at first, it looked like he succeeded, Gaim, passing right by the mecha. Nega sighed in relief…

And then, with a metallic groan, the head and what was left of the Dragon's body separated, tumbling into the chasm.

Nega screamed in terror as he entered freefall, red lights flashing all over his cockpit as he desperately tried to regain control. With an electronic whine, hatches opened all over the surface of the severed head, more thrusters popping out and flaring to life, managing to arrest his descent. His relief didn't last for long, though, because his instruments indicated Gaim was closing in on him fast. Sparks flew up all around the surface of the severed head as the Rider opened fire with his gun, once more separated from his blade, pelting the metal cranium with energy bursts. With a few button pushes, machine guns emerged from the back of the head and started shooting back at Gaim as Nega frantically tried to fly what was left of his vehicle away from Gaim.

 _This has gone too far,_ he thought in frustration and fear. _I underestimated him… And clearly, he's still hasn't shown his true power! There's no way I can beat him on my own… Perhaps with Dark Oak's help, however?_

Speaking of the warlord, he was pulling out all the stops against Blaze, throwing everything he had at her, and I mean EVERYTHING. Pine Iron spiked balls shot out of cracks all over the place, either smashing into the ground or forming a maze of chains to try and trip Blaze up, with not much space between them. Ichigo Kunai were constantly flying from out of nowhere, exploding whenever they hit a surface and knocking out chunks of the platform to make up for failing to hit their target. Suika Sojinto naginatas and Kiwi Gekirin rings spun through the air like buzzsaws at all levels, creating hazards to jump or duck under. Banaspear lances and Kagematsu yaris either shot through the air or burst out of the ground. Donkachi hammers and Mango Punisher maces slammed into the ground all over the place. Duri Noko swords swiped through the air and cut out chunks of the ramp. And through it all Dark Oak was teleporting like mad, never staying in any one place for too long, only appearing with just enough time to fire off a few shots from his Budou Ryuhou handguns or Sonic Arrow bow before vanishing again.

And it was not enough.

Blaze dodged over, under, and around the pineapple orbs, managing to somehow always find a gap between the web of chains to gracefully twirl or tumble through. She snatched kunai out of the air, holding them between her fingers or in her teeth, swinging them about to deflect incoming projectiles or hurling them to destroy obstacles in her path. She was always able to jump over or slide beneath the naginatas and rings whenever they flew at her, somehow always managing to squeeze through even when there were so many stacked up vertically or horizontally it seemed that there was no way for her to slip past them. The lances and yaris she was also able to grab and use for herself until they inevitably broke or were wasted being thrown at Dark Oak, who always seem to be able to teleport out of the way just in time. The hammers and maces, while very powerful, were always too slow, just missing her by a fraction of a second every time they came crashing down. The swords weren't much better, and also fell prey to her sticky fingers, being turned against their kin. The bullets and arrows seemed to always come closest to hitting her, but not close enough, especially since whenever Dark Oak fired one off Blaze always seemed to have a weapon on hand to deflect them with or could dodge behind one of the other many, MANY other obstacles trying to kill her.

And through it all, Dark Oak was starting to get more and more frustrated… And afraid. No matter what he conjured up, no matter what he threw at her, it never seemed to be enough. She did not tire, she did not stop, she would not _die_. _How is this possible?!_ He wondered, incredulous. _I have the power of Helheim behind me, and a fraction of the Golden Fruit at my command… She should have been dead ages ago. I doubt any other hero or warrior could possibly have lasted this long! How is she doing this? Just… Just what IS she?_

"What ARE you?!" He demanded out loud.

Blaze slid between a pair of yaris, reaching up to snag a naginata out of the air as it spun by just over her, snapping back to her feet and twirling the two weapons around her, deflecting a barrage of knives, blades, and bullets as she went, quick-stepping around pineapple balls, hammers, and maces. "Haven't we been over this already?" She asked with a smirk. "I am Blaze the Cat, Queen of Demons, Chiefest of Calamities-"

"Yes, yes, Archfiend of the Abyssal Planes, Flames of Disaster, Avatar of Iblis, and Destroyer of Worlds, I know, I KNOW!" Dark Oak snapped, infuriated.

"And is that not answer enough?" Blaze asked, thrusting her yari into the ground and using it as a pole vault to flip over a veritable wall of rings and naginatas spinning towards her. Yaris shot down from the ceiling to try and impale her, but she hurled her own naginata ahead of her, the spinning blade slicing through the spears and allowing her to pass through unscathed.

"Even the mightiest of demons has their limits!" Dark Oak snarled, with a hint of desperation in his voice.

"Yes, but I'm not just a mighty demon," Blaze shot back, landing on a lance shooting underneath her, and springing off of it, somersaulting through a web of chains before landing back on the ground in taking off just before a hammer could smash her. "There is a light within me… A flame which will never ever go out… And so long as it keeps burning, so long as I have people depending on me, and the determination and drive to make my dreams a reality… So long as there is even one foe still standing before me… I will not stop. I will NEVER stop!"

…

"I think, beloved, that when I first realized you were the same in that sense… That, I think, is when I started to realize I was falling in love with you," Blaze said fondly.

"Awww," just about everyone cooed as Sonic blushed.

"Hmmph," Amy grunted.

…

Dark Oak faltered for a second, realizing with a sudden shock that she was telling the truth. _And I thought my own conviction was ironclad…_ He thought, alarmed. _But it's nothing compared to hers! And yet… I cannot yield! Much like my namesake, I will not bend, no matter what adversity faces me! Even when a fire rages through a forest, there is still SOMETHING left standing of the trees! She talks big about being a wildfire which will burn the world clean… But all forest fires go out when they run out of fuel, whereas the trees, even the badly burnt ones, might still remain standing after the fire!_

With a mighty roar, he threw his arms back, his body surrounded by a golden aura as he called upon even more of his power, shock waves blasting out from him and rocking the chamber, nearly causing Blaze to misstep and get skewered by a lance. With a wave of his hand, the remaining weapons dissipated in motes of light, and he clutched his hands together, spreading them apart to form a massive golden energy ball vaguely shaped like an Apple, which he hurled at Blaze. She dodged it, but the power behind the sphere was tremendous, utterly disintegrating piece of ramp it struck, as well as a good chunk of the wall. Dark Oak spread his arms out, forming more energy balls which he started hurling rapidly Blaze, teleporting all over the place once more to make it harder for her to predict where his attacks were coming from as well as strike back.

Gritting her teeth, the feline dashed all over the place, zigzagging to avoid the energy balls, frantically hurling fireballs of her own to try and intercept the swarm of blasts heading her way, tremendous explosions erupting whenever the projectiles collided and bathing the shaft in baleful golden light. At times, she was even forced to run up the wall, or even dash briefly across the underside of the ramp above her to avoid the orbs of golden death.

After a few minutes of this, Dark Oak switched tactics, violently slashing his arms through the air. At first, Blaze thought he was going to fling some sort of energy blade at her…

And then the wall just in front of and beside her erupted, thorny vines shooting out to block her path. With only milliseconds before she crashed into it, she leaped into the air, somersaulting through a tiny gap in the vines and landing on the other side. Dark Oak swept his arms through the air again and again, causing more walls of vines to burst from the walls, floor, and ceiling, just ahead of her each time giving her only a fraction of a second less to react and dive through the conveniently placed opening in the barrier. As a new wall sprung into being almost the instant she twisted through the last one, she quickly angled her dive towards the small opening just ahead…

Only for the opening to suddenly seal shut microseconds before she could pass through it. Her eyes widened as the thorns shot towards her…

And then, without warning, flames erupted from around her in a tremendous burst, obliterating the wall, as well as the one just behind her, much to Dark Oak's surprise. He quickly formed more walls, but she didn't bother trying to find a way through them, but simply plowed through them with the new speed and power granted by her Fire Boost, scorching the ground beneath her feet. She smashed through barrier after barrier, speeding her way up the ramp until she was inevitably moving faster than the warlord could create walls to try and stop her.

With a growl of frustration, Dark Oak drew his sword and vanished in a teleport, reappearing further up the ramp ahead of Blaze. With a battle roar, his golden aura blasted out around him in a blazing corona, cratering the ground beneath his feet as he charged down the ramp at speeds almost rivaling Blaze's own. Their eyes locked as the distance between them rapidly shrank, both their bodies tensing as they prepared for the inevitable clash. With only seconds before they could collide, Dark Oak swung his blade at the feline's head…

And was just a picosecond too slow, as Blaze flipped over the sword and surged forward with a Fire Claw, smashing into Dark Oak hard enough to nearly shatter his chest armor. He was flung backwards, hitting the ground hard enough to rebound off it and bounce and roll a ways forward. Before he could recover, Blaze slammed into him again, flinging him into the air and off the ramp, howling in agony as the cat struck him with fireball after fireball, each burst juggling him further into the air.

This came to an end when the head of the Nega Egg Dragon swooped down from out of nowhere, catching Dark Oak on its nose, and quickly flying away. "I think, Your Excellency," Nega grunted, glancing anxiously behind him to see that Gaim was still in hot pursuit. "That we might want to consider a strategic retreat."

"No," Dark Oak snarled. "If we flee now, we will prove ourselves forever unworthy of the Golden Fruit. No, I think it's time for us to finish them… Together!"

He jumped onto the top of Nega's cockpit, charging golden energy into his hand and slamming his palm down onto the surface beneath him. Energy washed out from his hand, turning the black and yellow hull of the machine pure gold, as well as mending all the numerous injuries it had sustained throughout the long battle, replacing its destroyed eye and lower jaw as well as its whiskers. Nega goggled in disbelief and started cackling insanely as his badly depleted energy gauges not only went back to full, but went beyond triple their maximum capacity. "Oh yes, THIS I can work with!" He crowed gleefully, aiming his targeting software at the cat running the along the ramp below.

The Golden Dragon's mouth opened, golden energy coalescing in its jaws as the air crackled around it with incredible power. With a roar, a tremendous shining energy blast lanced out from the Dragon's mouth, striking a stretch of ramp just ahead of Blaze, causing it to shatter. The cat's eyes widened in alarm, but she quickly jumped, using her speed and feline reflexes to nimbly hop from fragment of track to fragment of track and land on the other side before they could fall completely.

"You missed!" Dark Oak growled.

"Look, I'm not used to this much power, okay?!" Nega snapped back. He paused, an evil grin slowly forming on his face. "And you know, this actually gives me an idea…"

The Dragon's eyes lit up, and golden lasers started shooting out of them. One struck the wall just behind Blaze and started sweeping up the ramp towards her, forcing her to move faster to keep from being vaporized by the lethal energy. The other laser, on the other hand, rather than being a continuous beam was a series of blasts which obliterated large sections of the track before her, forcing her to cross either by jumping across pieces of debris before they could fall, make very long jumps, or briefly run across the wall to get over the gaps.

Blaze grit her teeth but kept running, hurling fireballs at the dragon head all the while. Unfortunately, due to the increased durability granted by the golden energy coursing through it, the fireballs only splashed harmlessly against the glittering hull, causing the two villains to laugh. Cursing under her breath, Blaze forced herself to pick up speed, noting that the laser behind her was practically licking at her heels. As the section of track in front of her exploded, she jumped, using a Fire Claw to get some extra air…

Only for the ground she was about to land on, much to her horror, to explode as another laser blast struck it. Not only did this leave her with nothing to land on, but the massive golden laser was only moments away from washing over her…

When suddenly, Gaim swept down on his hover bike, snatching her just before she could get caught in the beam and pulling her to safety. "Need a lift?" He quipped as they sped away.

"I was wondering when you were going to show up," she commented, squeezing his arm in thanks.

Nega cackled. "No matter, it just makes this easier for us! Now we only have ONE target to shoot at instead of two!" The Dragon started firing its eye beams at the hover bike.

Gaim dodged the blasts, then pointed his gun back and opened fire with its middle setting. Before the shots could impact, however, Dark Oak pulsed with golden light, and suddenly the dragon head was encased in a spherical force field of golden energy, Gaim's energy bullets dissipating harmlessly against it. "He's tapped into more of the Golden Fruit's power… Nothing in either of our conventional arsenals will be able to break through that," Gaim commented.

"Which means we will have to resort to something UNconventional, I take it?" Blaze asked.

"Precisely," Gaim said, producing a large, bulky golden lock with a glittering orange surrounded by gems resembling other fruits embossed on the front and what looked like a key extending from the side opposite the handle. "Get ready to jump!" He yelled as he abruptly turned his bike around, steering it right towards the head.

"I don't know what you think you're doing, but if you want to kill yourselves that much faster, it's all the same to me!" Nega chortled, firing a blast from the Dragon's mouth.

"Now!" Gaim shouted.

Both riders leaped into the air just as the energy blast struck the bike, causing it to explode spectacularly. As they flew through the air towards the Dragon, Gaim clicked his lock open.

" _ **FRUIT BASKET!"**_

Numerous cracks zipped open in the air around them, eleven giant metal fruits flying out and spinning around Gaim. Gaim slapped the lock into the open socket on his belt, the key in its side fitting precisely into a slot on the side of the lock already in place, flipping it open with a twist of the handle.

" _ **LOCK OPEN! KIWAMI ARMS! DAI-DAI-DAI-DAI-DAI-SHOGUN!"**_

…

"Wait a second… Isn't that the same-" Espio started.

"As Dark Oak's transformation before?" Blaze smirked. "Yes, only Gaim's was the real deal."

…

As Blaze's eyes widened in amazement, the fruits all converged on Gaim, and in a flash of light his armor had transformed yet again. It was silvery-white, with a black and gold chest plate with images of an orange, melon, strawberry, grapes, and watermelon emblazoned on them, with a long red cape tumbling down his back. The left and right sides of his belt had been replaced by holsters for the six locks he had used prior to this going down his hips, and his helmet was now conical with a curved sword-shaped crest on his forehead and a visor shimmering red, yellow, green, and orange. He looked an awful lot like Dark Oak's current form…

No, that wasn't true, Blaze realized. It was the other way around… The evil warlord's armor just happened to look like Gaim's, which she instinctively realized was the genuine article, whereas Dark Oak was just wearing a pale imitation. "Incredible…" She whispered, awed by the feeling of pure power washing off of Gaim's form in droves. _So_ this _is his true power…_

"Yeah, my friends thought so the first time they saw this, too," Gaim admitted, abashed. "I guess it is kind of something, isn't it?"

Dark Oak stirred, staring at the other warrior in alarm. _These power levels… they're unreal! Even rivaling my own! Is_ this _what the Golden Fruit is capable of?!_ "Nega, shoot them down, now!"

"On it!" Nega called back, the dragon's eyes and mouth powering up for another attack.

"I don't think so!" Gaim said, pressing down on the knife-shaped lever on the side of his belt, causing both of his locks to flash. "Burai Kick!"

He somersaulted through the air and shot towards the Dragon head in a flying kick, Golden energy coating his foot. The Dragon fired its lasers and energy blasts, all of which converged on the Rider…

And had no effect on him, as the power of his kick allowed him to plow right through them, golden light splintering from his form as he went, the deadly beams, carving erratic lines through the walls around them, slicing through platforms and vines. Blaze, eyes wide, could do little more than follow in his wake, careful to stay just behind him so as not to get hit by any of the fragmented beams. _And here I thought this was supposed to be my show,_ she couldn't help thinking to herself, jealous for just a moment… But no longer than that, before she chided herself for such a charitable thought. _On the other hand, if he weren't here, I'd be fighting two very powerful opponents by myself, and while I'm sure I could manage, it'd be even harder than it is now. Practicality should take precedence over pride._

…

"That sounds like a very sensible lesson," Cream commented.

"It is," Blaze agreed. "One that is often harder to practice than it is to say, but one that should be striven for nonetheless." Some of the more prideful members of the group fidgeted but said nothing.

…

With a great cry, Gaim's kick collided with the force field… And shattered it completely, Golden fragments flying everywhere and dissipating into the air. Still, yelling, he kept going, aiming his kick towards Dark Oak. Nega, who was seated directly beneath the warlord, understandably panicked, but Dark Oak stood his ground, using his power to open a crack and summon a weapon.

" _ **MELON DEFENDER!"**_

The familiar shield flew into his hand just in time for him to raise it to block Gaim's kick, sparks flying from the surface of the shield as Gaim's energy-charged kick slammed into it at full strength, and Dark Oak was forced to plant his feet firmly into the top of the cockpit, digging deep grooves into it as he was pushed back a few feet by the force of the kick. Even so, he was able to hold his ground…

Until Blaze, who he had, regretfully, forgotten, shot over Gaim and smashed into his face with Fire Claw, cracking his orb and flinging him backwards with a cry of agony, a cry which was amplified when Gaim's kick, no longer impeded by the shield, smashed into his back, slamming him into the rear of the dragon head hard enough to crater it and rock the vehicle.

As Blaze and Gaim landed nearby and raced towards him, the warlord snarled in fury and desperation as he staggered to his feet, unleashing a tremendous wave of golden energy which shook the Dragon's head… And had no effect on the two warriors, who fought back with battle auras of their own, golden for Gaim and flaming for Blaze. Growling in frustration, Dark Oak mustered his power, causing a rather sizable number of cracks to tear open in the air around him.

" _ **DAIDAIMARU/PINE IRON/ICHIGO KUNAI/SUIKA SOJINTO/BANASPEAR/DONKACHI/DURI NOKO/SONIC ARROW/MANGO PUNISHER/BUDOU RYUHOU/KIWI GEKIRIN/MELON DEFENDER/KAGEMATSU/KURUMI BOMBERS!"**_

Every single weapon Dark Oak had called upon throughout the long battle flew out of the cracks, swirled around the warlord, and shot towards the two heroes…

" _ **DAIDAIMARU/PINE IRON/ICHIGO KUNAI/SUIKA SOJINTO/BANASPEAR/DONKACHI/DURI NOKO/SONIC ARROW/MANGO PUNISHER/BUDOU RYUHOU/KIWI GEKIRIN/MELON DEFENDER/KAGEMATSU/KURUMI BOMBERS!"**_

Only to run into an exactly identical swarm of weapons summoned by Gaim, the cloud of armaments violently clashing against each other before being flung away, floating through the air around the head. "What?!" Dark Oak shouted, incredulous.

"I've been using that trick longer than this country of yours has existed," Gaim said dismissively, swishing his cape behind him. "You may aspire to obtain the power of the Golden Fruit, and maybe even managed to tap into a sliver of its incredible might… But in the end, you are not one who's been chosen. There is nothing golden in you!"

"Then what do you call THIS?!" Dark Oak shouted, armor glowing a brilliant gold as he fired a massive energy beam at the two of them. Gaim calmly extended a hand, the beam striking a golden barrier inches away from him and splintering harmlessly. He started walking forwards, pushing the beam back towards Dark Oak, who was trembling and snarling as he tried to generate enough power to overwhelm the other warrior…

And did not notice that Nega's cockpit had transformed, elevating a few feet out of the top of the head on a pivot and swiveling around, a number of turrets and cannons popping out of the sides. Snickering evilly, the mad scientist targeted Gaim's back and pressed a trigger…

Only for the stream of machine gun bullets he'd fired to be deflected by Blaze, who'd snatched up one of the Melon Defender shields drifting around the battlefield and leapt to defend Gaim's back. "Did you forget there were two of them?" The cat quipped.

"I'd assumed there wasn't much he could do against us at this close a range. Clearly I was wrong," Gaim said, nodding to her in gratitude.

"That you were!" Nega growled, firing a salvo of missiles at the two heroes. The duo quickly rolled out of the way of the projectiles, which rained down all over the ground where they had been standing, the bombardment nearly striking Dark Oak.

"Hey, watch where you're shooting! I'm here too!" Dark Oak snarled.

"Then use that fancy teleporting trick of yours to get out of my way!" Nega snapped back, swiveling his cockpit to try and get one of the heroes in his sights. Dark Oak grunted in frustration and did just that.

He reappeared a few meters away, snatched up one of the Pine Irons, then teleported again, reappearing behind Blaze and swinging the pineapple down at the back of her head. She rolled out of the way before it could strike her, the pineapple smashing into the top of the dragon head and getting stuck. Unfortunately, she found herself rolling right into the path of Nega's cannons. "Got you now!" The scientist sneered, opening fire.

Gaim suddenly leapt down in front of Blaze, using a Melon Defender to protect both of them from Nega's barrage. Blaze noticed a Budou Ryuohou gun nearby, snatched it up, then volleyed over Gaim's head, opening fire at Nega's cockpit. Dark Oak suddenly materialized in front of the cockpit, wielding a Suika Sojinto naginata, which he twirled through the air before him to deflect the grape bullets before flinging it at Blaze. Gaim snatched a Kagematsu yari and thrust it before and beneath Blaze, striking the spinning naginata and knocking it away. Blaze landed on the back of the yari and sprung off, grabbing a pair of Duri Nokos swords as she flipped through the air and bringing them down on Dark Oak's head, charging them with her powers so they burst into flame. Dark Oak quickly grabbed a pair of passing Daidamarus blades and crossed them before him, catching Blaze's swords on his own. He quickly swung his blades outward, nearly knocking the swords out of Blaze's hands, but she managed to maintain her grip as she flipped backwards, landing on top of Nega's cockpit. Dark Oak charged at her, and with a snarl, she leapt up to meet him, sparks flying as the two clashed blades again and again.

"Hey! Get off of there!" Nega growled, swiveling his cockpit frantically to try and get the two combatants off of him. Noticing this, Dark Oak floated a few inches up into the air, not only giving him an increased height advantage against Blaze, but also meaning he no longer had to maintain his footing, whereas the feline found herself having to struggle to maintain her balance due to being pressed from above by Dark Oak's swords and below by Nega wildly spinning his cockpit around. Fortunately, Gaim intervened, grabbing a Banaspear and thrusting into the ground, causing a group of banana-shaped spikes to erupt from around Nega's cockpit, the turret's weapons emplacements getting caught in the protrusions as it spun around, bringing its frenzied gyrations to a grinding stop. "H-hey! Cut that out!"

"No," Gaim said, grabbing a discarded Ichigo Kunai and flinging it at Dark Oak. The warlord reflexively brought up one of his swords to deflect it, but in the process left an opening which Blaze quickly took advantage of, launching upwards in a Boost Jump which both scorched and partially melted the top of the cockpit and allowed her to knock away Dark Oak's other sword, freeing her to lash out with both blades, cutting deeply into the warlord's chest. Dark Oak cried out in pain, but managed to grab a Duri Noko of his own as it floated by, bringing it up in time to counter Blaze's next strike, the two locking blades.

Nega, relieved the two of them were now off his cockpit, quickly brought his cannons up to bear, aiming at Blaze's back. However, before he could open fire, Gaim hurled a Kiwi Gekirin through the air, and the razor disk sliced through the cannons, causing their ends to fall off and the rest of them to explode moments later. "Gack! That does it!" Nega growled, fiddling with his controls.

Thrusters lit upon the underside of the Dragon head… But only on one side, causing the makeshift vehicle to start rotating in the air. "Uh-oh," Gaim said as he noticed the angle of the ground rapidly changing beneath his feet. "Blaze, we need to move!"

Blaze, who had just landed nearby after being rebuked by Dark Oak, grunted in irritation. "A rotating platform? Haven't had to deal with one of those since Phoenixia." She hurled her blades at Dark Oak, who quickly deflected them, then swiftly started running towards the rising edge of the head, Gaim hot on her heels. Dark Oak snatched up some Kiwi Gekirin and hurled them at the duo, but Gaim grabbed a Pine Iron floating by and swung it behind him, deflecting the bladed wheels before they could hit them. The two heroes reached the crest of the sloping platform just before it became it nearly vertical…

And saw, to their dismay, Nega was flying awfully close to the wall. "Suddenly, I'm not certain this was the best idea," Blaze commented as the wall rushed towards them.

"Likewise," Gaim agreed.

The two of them quickly jumped back just before Nega smashed the side of the Dragon head into the wall, sparks flying and a metallic shriek filling the air as he ground along its length. Blaze and Gaim started sliding back down the slope of the acutely tilted head, but Blaze dug her claws into the metal and Gaim grabbed and drove a Daidaimaru into the hull to try and slow their descent before they could fall into the abyss. Nega cackled and fired his thrusters again, which not only violently propelled them away from the wall but completely flipped the head upside down, leaving the duo dangling helplessly above the gaping pit below.

In a swirl of leaves, Dark Oak appeared beneath them, Sonic Arrow drawn and primed to fire. Blaze and Gaim looked at each other, nodded…

And, simultaneously, let go, falling towards the warlord below. "What-" Dark Oak exclaimed, startled that they'd actually try something so suicidally stupid, right before they were upon him, Blaze savagely tearing into him with claws and fangs and flames, while Gaim had managed to grab a Kurumi Bomber on the way down and was punching him repeatedly in the face. "GAH! GET OFF! _GET OFF!_ " He screamed desperately, throwing his Sonic Arrow away and struggling to dislodge his assailants. In a swirl of leaves, he teleported away, but unfortunately, given that they were clinging onto him so tightly, they were warped right along with him, allowing them to continue their assault. Frantic, he rapidly teleported all over the place, more out of frenzied agonized desperation than strategy, trying to disorient them so much they let go, but if anything, the confusion only drove them to hurt him that much harder.

Eventually, they wound up crashing back onto the Dragon head, which Nega had righted since he'd started to feel somewhat queasy from being upside down. The impact finally knocked Blaze and Gaim off, but the two warriors quickly got back to their feet, while Dark Oak seemed to be having trouble standing. His cape was in tatters, his armor ripped apart and smoldering in many places, the colorful fruit on his chest blackened and dented beyond recognition, and the orb on his face so splintered it was a marvel he could see anything through it. "I… Have had… ENOUGH!" He roared, golden energy exploding off of him, rocking the head, shaking the chamber, and buffeting the two heroes back, though they quickly formed their own auras to protect themselves.

In a swirl of leaves, Dark Oak teleported onto the top of Nega's cockpit, armor glowing with golden power.

" _ **DAIDAIMARU/PINE IRON/ICHIGO KUNAI/SUIKA SOJINTO/BANASPEAR/DONKACHI/DURI NOKO/SONIC ARROW/MANGO PUNISHER/BUDOU RYUHOU/KIWI GEKIRIN/MELON DEFENDER/KAGEMATSU/KURUMI BOMBERS!"**_

The many weapons he had summoned earlier flew towards him and started rapidly circling him in concentric rings. He crossed his arms, and the weapons moved outwards as a sphere of golden energy formed around him and the cockpit, the weapons orbiting the sphere like electrons around an atom's nucleus.

" _ **KIWAMI SQUASH!"**_

The weapons started spinning even faster as rather nasty-looking bolts of energy crackled off of the sphere and the glow surrounding Dark Oak intensified. "Looks like he's about to use some kind of ultimate attack," Gaim commented.

"Then I suppose it behooves us to finish him before he finishes us," Blaze replied.

Gaim nodded and flicked the knife lever on his belt.

" _ **DAIDAIMARU/PINE IRON/ICHIGO KUNAI/SUIKA SOJINTO/BANASPEAR/DONKACHI/DURI NOKO/SONIC ARROW/MANGO PUNISHER/BUDOU RYUHOU/KIWI GEKIRIN/MELON DEFENDER/KAGEMATSU SHIN/KURUMI BOMBERS!"**_

All the weapons he'd summoned earlier flew towards him. He drew his DJ gun, then glanced at Blaze. "I'm going to create an opening for you. Will you be ready?"

Blaze scoffed. "What sort of question is that?"

"A poor one," Gaim said with a chuckle. He pressed down on the lever again, causing it to shout, _**"SOIYA! KIWAMI AU LAIT!"**_

The weapons orbiting him shot towards the ones circling Dark Oak and Nega, sparks and explosions filling the air as they clashed once again, drawing Dark Oak's weapons away from the energy sphere and creating an opening. Gaim removed his Golden lock and inserted it into the socket on his gun.

" _ **FRUITS BASKET: KIWAMI CHARGE!"**_

Gaim pulled the trigger, firing a massive energy burst surrounded by swirling projections of fruit at the Golden barrier. With a tremendous explosion, the bursts struck the barrier and shattered it, sending all the weapons flying and causing Dark Oak to stagger, the energy he'd been gathering dissipating. "Now!" Gaim yelled, but he needn't have bothered, for Blaze had already been in motion the second Gaim had pulled the trigger. A Burst Dash blazing into life around her, she jumped into the air and slammed into Dark Oak with a full-power Fire Claw, shattering his orb visor and punching a hole straight through his chest, flames erupting from his back and destroying what was left of his cape. Howling in agony, he was flung backwards from the impact, flying through the air.

As Blaze was rebounded by the impact, Gaim suddenly shot by on a hover bike, grabbing her as he passed as he flew after the stunned and severely injured Dark Oak. He snapped his Musou Sabre into place on his gun, pulling the trigger as he powered up an attack even greater than the one the he had used before to decapitate the Nega Egg Dragon.

" _ **1, 10, 100, 1000, 10,000, 100,000,000, 1000,000,000,000, FRUITS BASKET: KIWAMI CHARGE!"**_

"Hinawa DaiDai Musou Zan!" Gaim roared as he slashed his sword through Dark Oak as they shot by him, energy projections of fruit flying from the blade's edge as it sliced through the warlord, triggering a tremendous explosion.

…

"Wait, what did he say?" Asked a confused Amy.

"Matchlock Great Orange Unrivaled Slash," Rouge translated.

"That's a bit of a mouthful," Mighty commented.

The bat shrugged. "Japanese often is."

"Speaking of which, what's with all the Japanese, anyway?" Charmy asked. Blaze shrugged.

…

Blaze leapt off the back of the bike before they could get too far away from Dark Oak, diving back towards the warlord, whom she was sure was not finished yet. Sure enough, as the smoke cleared, he was still floating in the air, his armor ripped to shreds, a great deal of twisted green biomass exposed, xylem dripping from his numerous wounds, but he was not yet dead. Blaze grinned, intending to see if she could do something about that.

Before Dark Oak could recover, Blaze slammed into him with a fiery kick, deciding to emulate Gaim's technique from before, flames enveloping her form but especially concentrated in her foot, exacerbating the damage. Dark Oak cried out as fire ravaged his already badly injured form, and Blaze gritted her teeth in determination and savage pride as they hurtled downwards, colliding with the Nega Egg Dragon's head in a tremendous explosion that totally obliterated the vehicle.

Blaze was hurtled away from the blast, smoke trailing from her form. Gaim swooped down on his bike and caught her, yelping from the heat radiating from her form. "Ouch! I can feel that, even through my armor! That doesn't bother you at all?"

Blaze patted out a few small fires burning on her clothes, pleased to see they were more or less unharmed. "I wouldn't make a very good pyrokinetic demon if fire hurt me, now would I?"

"A fair point," Gaim admitted.

Blaze looked at the smoldering conflagration that had once been the Nega Egg Dragon and grimaced. "I don't suppose that finished them off, did it?"

"Does it ever?" Gaim replied.

Blaze sighed. "No, I suppose not."

Sure enough, Eggman Nega's hovercraft shot out of the flames, smoke and fire trailing from its form, Dark Oak clinging to the side. The mighty warlord was in terrible shape, most of his armor completely destroyed, exposing skin which might have been green at one point if it hadn't been so wholly consumed by Helheim corruption and burned almost pitch black from all the fire damage Blaze inflicted on him. Even as they watched, he seemed to be frantically trying to put out a few stubborn flares clinging to his body. "Don't worry, Your Majesty!" Nega growled as he started his badly wobbling flying machine upwards, the roof of the shaft only a few hundred meters above them. "This is just a minor setback. We're almost to the Fruit, once you get that, there will be no stopping you!"

Dark Oak glanced behind them, locking eyes with Blaze. "Unfortunately, I can no longer be entirely certain of that. Even so, I will not give up. Not yet."

Gaim revved his bike's engines. "Let's finish this!"

"With pleasure," Blaze said, forming fireballs in her hands.

They flew upwards after Nega and Dark Oak, shooting lasers from the bike's cannons and fireballs generated by Blaze. Nega's hovercraft did its best to dodge the projectiles, while Dark Oak managed to muster enough energy to fling a few blasts back their way, not really intending to hit them so much as keep them on their guard. As the top of the shaft drew ever closer, Nega pushed a button on his dashboard, firing a pair of missiles from the front of his hovercraft. They struck the roof and exploded, blasting open a hole and throwing up a cloud of smoke which the villains vanished into. Gaim and Blaze rapidly followed them into it…

And came out, much to their surprise, in sunlight.

"The tree…" Gaim whispered. "We've reached the top!"

"The sun…" Blaze whispered, squinting up at the brilliant light shining down on them, eyes watering not from pain, but from joy. "I haven't seen it since I left Phoenixia… It's even more beautiful than I remember…"

The two of them found themselves in the crown of the great Doom Tree, a hollow space the size of a football stadium formed from all the tree's great upper branches converging at the top. While most of the sky all around them was covered by dense green foliage, with shafts of light beaming down through the cracks, there was a big gaping hole in the canopy right above their heads, allowing sunlight to shine down on the hollow.

However, sunlight wasn't the only source of light bathing the treetops. Small golden apple-shaped fruits grew from almost every branch, as well as little saplings sprouting up from the ground here and there. A pure, radiant light emanated from each fruit, causing the tree crown to look like a nursery of baby stars. "Is this… The Golden Fruit?" Blaze asked in wonder as they passed over a veritable orchard of the brilliant fruits.

"Yes and no," Gaim said, snatching the fruit from one of the saplings as they passed it and examining it with a critical eye. "They're golden fruits, yes, but not THE Golden Fruit. Think of them as weaker offshoots, spawned by all the excess energy this big tree has been draining from the land around it. There's power in them, yes, but not anywhere near the extent a real Golden Fruit has."

"So what would happen if someone ate one of these?" Blaze asked suspiciously.

"Their wounds would be healed, their health restored, their power replenished if not temporarily boosted, and their lifespan significantly increased," Gaim said with the air of one lecturing on a subject he was an expert in. "No wish-granting, no godlike powers, and definitely no transforming into a completely other form of being. Unlike most Helheim plants, these are perfectly safe for consumption. You want one? Given how intensely you've been battling up to this point, and given we probably have at least one more fight to go, I figure you could use a pick me up. Er, not to disparage your skills or anything, but…"

Blaze regarded the fruit he proffered her skeptically. Her months of travel throughout Solana had instilled a deep distrust of anything born from Helheim into her… However, she felt no instinctive revulsion when she looked at the fruit, no warning from her flame. "You sure it wouldn't turn me into an Inves if I ate it?" She asked dubiously.

Gaim nodded. "My wife grows plenty of these back home, so we can give visitors something to eat that won't turn them into horrible monsters. Not that we get many visitors, granted, given that our planet is sort of under heavy quarantine because the rest of the universe is terrified of another Helheim invasion, and rightfully so, but…" He shrugged. "I'd offer to try it myself, to show you it's fine, but given that my body has been completely adapted to survive in any place that's been touched by Helheim, that's probably not the best guarantee."

Blaze looked at the fruit for another moment of uncertainty. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn't had anything to eat in a while. And the fruit DID look rather enticing…

Before she realized it, she had taken a bite out of the fruit. As the golden juices dripped down her chin, her eyes rolled back in her head, and an involuntary moan rose from her throat as the succulent flesh of the Apple-like object graced her tongue. It was the most delicious thing she'd ever tasted, an incredibly complex and indescribable mix of flavors that seemed to simultaneously trigger all the pleasure centers in her brain at once, a warm rosy feeling spreading throughout her body, causing all the numerous aches and pains she'd picked up during her long battle against Dark Oak and Nega to fade away completely. She felt invigorated, a weariness she hadn't even noticed bearing down on her vanishing as strength filled her, her inner flame rekindling brilliantly as her power replenished itself.

Within moments, she had completely consumed the fruit, messily splattering Gaim's cape and the front of her coat in sparkling juice. As she desperately licked her paws to get the last traces of juice into her mouth, she heard Gaim chuckle and flushed, realizing she'd made a spectacle of herself. "Good, isn't it?"

Trying to school her face into an expression of stoic calm, she said, "If you tell anyone of this, I shall kill you."

"Sorry, you just looked… Nevermind." He snatched up another fruit and offered it to Blaze. "Would you like another?"

"I would, thank you," she said, graciously taking the food from his hand and delicately nibbling on it. That lasted for all five seconds before she consumed it as ferociously as she had the previous one. What could she say? She was hungry.

…

"Wow. Must be some pretty good fruit," Charmy commented.

"Is," Tails said. "Sonic and I have some whenever we happen to be in Blaze's world."

"Just how good is it?" Asked a curious Cream.

"Let me put it this way. They're ALMOST as good as South Island chili dogs, and I don't say that lightly," Sonic said with a hint of reluctance.

Mighty gasped. "You speak blasphemy!"

"No, it's true, they really ARE that good," Tails insisted.

Mighty scoffed. "I'll be the judge of that. Blaze, you wouldn't happen to have any of that food on you, would you?"

Blaze shook her head. "Unfortunately, no. It doesn't handle interdimensional transit very well."

"How convenient," Mighty said, not quite believing her.

Shadow stiffened. "Wait a minute… Magic fruit that's so healthy it can make you stronger and extend your lifespan… Blaze, is this what Tikal was talking about earlier? The fruit that's the source of your kingdom's longevity?"

"Oh yeah, almost forgot about that," Vector said.

"I forgot completely," Knuckles confessed.

"That does not surprise me," Espio said dryly.

Blaze nodded. "It is. I may be getting a bit ahead of myself here, but after Dark Oak was defeated, all traces of Helheim were removed from Solana… Except for the harmless lesser strain of the Golden Fruit, because of… Well, as I said, that's getting ahead of myself. It's become one of our greatest sources of prosperity, its succulent life-giving juices able to cure almost any illness and prolong life spans to the point where death by old age is almost unheard of, even able to reverse aging in those who are already quite old to a limited extent. It has also helped us to grow strong, and is one of our primary sources of power and strength. One of the few downsides is that we need to eat it constantly to maintain its effects, and it doesn't grow very well outside of Solana due to the unique composition of our soil, thanks to everything it went through during Dark Oak's reign. As such, pretty much all of the vassal states and nations making up my Empire outside of the heartland are rather heavily dependent on us to export the fruit, which can sometimes make it quite difficult to produce enough to keep up with demand, especially as my reach spreads ever wider across the world. This also makes our supply lines important targets for many of our enemies, who want the fruit for themselves… And that's just scratching the surface of all the other difficulties just possessing this fruit entails, and that's not even touching on all the trouble we had completely reworking society from the ground up to accommodate for an entire nation of immortals without creating a culture doomed to stagnate or lead into severe social stratification due to it being much harder to improve your status in life because the people above you are far less likely to retire or drop dead and create an opening, like they would have in a place where aging was still a thing." She sighed, and then shrugged her shoulders. "Still, the benefits of having the fruit far outweigh the negatives, and while my subjects may occasionally grumble about all the hard work and taxes that go into making sure there's enough fruit for everyone, nobody would even CONSIDER giving it up. And on the bright side, it's relatively easy to grow and matures very quickly, and we don't have to worry too much about overpopulation because it significantly reduces reproduction rates… Although there are problems with THAT as well, but you don't need to hear about all that, I think."

"Huh," Mighty said. "I never thought that there would be that many problems attached to what's basically an unlimited immortality inducer that's available to all."

"Or for that matter, using it to create a country where everyone can live forever," Shadow commented.

"Most people don't," Tails said. "These sorts of things are usually much more complicated than most people think."

"She would probably have fewer problems if she were to limit the fruit's distribution, but the fact that she is willing to give it to everyone instead of hoarding it herself and those closest to her speaks volumes about the sort of ruler she is," Espio commented.

"Yeah, and definitely better than those stuffy old echidnas," Charmy agreed.

Knuckles sighed. "I'd probably be more upset at that crack if you weren't absolutely right. My ancestors were jerks."

"You see, Amy? Blaze really IS a nice person! Not the horrible she-Devil you're always accusing her of being!" Cream said cheerfully.

"Eh," Amy grunted.

"In my kingdom, the vast majority of our population are either naturally immortal, undead (which amounts to basically the same thing), or exceptionally long-lived, so we don't need to rely on an external stimuli to maintain our longevity," Rouge commented.

"I thought you needed blood," Sonic said.

"Yes, in the same way you mortals need food or water," Rouge explained. "If we don't get any for a while, our bodies eventually shut down. Of course, it's not quite as permanent as it would be for your kind- just a drop of blood is usually enough to revive us – – but while blood is necessary for us to keep functioning, it's not the source of our immortality." She shrugged. "Of course, our society is far from perfect either, but what would you expect from a kingdom of monsters?"

"I'm not sure any nation is perfect, really," Blaze admitted. "Mine is far from perfect, but I still do the best I can to make it a good enough place for everyone to live in and try to live up to the ideals I hold dear. Of course, to cement the birth of that nation, I had one last foe to dispose of…"

…

"Now that you've sated your hunger, let's find Nega and Dark Oak," Gaim said, peering out across the great orchard. "Where did they go? We were right behind them!"

"There looks like a good start," Blaze said, pointing at a clearing in the very center of the orchard. Another tree grew from the center of this clear space, about half again as tall as all the others, its branches heavy with shining fruit, a large hollow open in its front filled with amber, a figure embedded inside. Dark Oak was standing before the hollow, trying to force a hand through its surface to reach a glimmer of light shining from within it.

Gaim did a double take. "How did I not notice that sooner?!" He gunned his engine and started for the clearing…

When suddenly, Eggman Nega's vehicle erupted from the orchard beneath them and slammed into the bike from below, nearly knocking them out of the sky. "You didn't forget about little old me, now did you?" The madman cackled, firing a barrage of missiles and lasers at them.

Gaim quickly regained control of his bike and maneuvered out of the way of the blasts. "We don't have much time. Blaze, I'll hold him off, you have to hurry and get to Dark Oak before he gets the fruit! You cannot, under any circumstances, let him eat it!"

"Don't worry, I've no intention of letting that happen," Blaze said, leaping off the bike and landing gracefully in the orchard below.

"What, you aren't going to wish me luck?" Gaim called down after her as she started running towards the clearing at the center of everything.

"Do you need it?" She shouted back.

Gaim chuckled. "Fair point."

"No! I'm not going to let you get away-" Nega snarled, targeting Blaze, only for Gaim to ram into his vehicle, knocking it back. "Gah!"

"You aren't going anywhere, Nega," Gaim growled. "Let's finish this!"

As the sounds of roaring engines and laser fire receded behind her, Blaze rushed through the orchard, leaves rustling as she dashed past them, the light from the fruit mingling with the sunlight to give the place a radiant, otherworldly glow. _This place is beautiful,_ Blaze could not help thinking despite herself. _I never would've thought that something as lovely as this could spring from something generated by Helheim… There's probably a valuable lesson to be learned from that, but I don't really have time to dwell on that right now! I have to stop Dark Oak!_

As she ran, she cupped her hands at her side, focusing her power into them. A ball of fire formed between them, then condensed, growing tighter, hotter, darker, less a burning sphere than a hole in the world.

…

"THAT-IS-THE-SAME-ATTACK-YOU-USED-TO-ANNIHILATE-RED-PINE. DID-YOU-DESTROY-DARK-OAK-THE-SAME-WAY?" Omega asked eagerly.

Blaze shook her head. "While that might have made for a nice bookend to the whole adventure, I did not. What I did do, however, was almost as satisfying…"

…

Just as the dark orb reached peak power, Blaze burst out of the trees and into the clearing just as Dark Oak removed his hand from the amber, which Blaze could now see contained the still figure of an adult Seedrian woman resembling Cosmo, but much older and no less beautiful, wearing a long-sleeved white and light green dress with yellow cuffs and jewel piece, white tights, powder blue shoes, powder blue hair down to her knees, and a white flower sprouting from the top of her head with a pair of vines dangling down from it past her waist. With her eyes closed and a peaceful look on her face, one could easily be mistaken for thinking she was sleeping… Were it not for the gaping hole in her chest right about where her heart should have been, coinciding with the hole Dark Oak had punched through the amber casing. Blaze only glanced at the woman – – Earthia, Cosmo's mother and Dark Oak's Queen – – for a moment before focusing on what was clutched firmly in the warlord's hand: a transparent golden apple, with a shimmering, vibrant core of energy pulsing within it… The Golden Fruit, of which all the other shining fruits filling the orchard were nothing more than a pale imitation. Trembling with anticipation, so enraptured by his hard-fought prize he was unaware of Blaze's presence, Dark Oak raised the fruit to his mouth, jaws opening wide to take a bite…

And then Blaze shouted, "DARK OAK!" And threw her ball of pure Destruction.

Startled, Dark Oak glanced away from the fruit and saw Blaze, eyes widening in horror when he saw what was flying towards him. He tried to jump to the side…

And the ball struck the Golden Fruit, knocking it out of his hand and engulfing it in black flames.

"NO!" Dark Oak screamed in horrified disbelief, desperately trying to grab the burning fruit, not caring about the flames of quantum destruction… Only for them to snuff out before his fingers could even brush them, leaving absolutely nothing behind, not even embers. The Fruit was gone. "No…" He whispered, falling to his knees, his shoulders slumping in absolute, utter defeat.

It was over. His ambitions, his vision for the world, his dreams for a better future… All of them gone. He had lost.

…

"YES! You did it!" Cream squeaked in delight.

"And you really did what you said, and destroyed the Golden Fruit…" Rouge marveled. "I'm not sure I could have. I would've wanted it for myself."

"Which is why it's probably a very good thing Helheim is never coming to our world… Again. Er, it isn't, is it?" Mighty asked uncertainly.

Shadow shrugged. "We haven't detected any Helheim plants or Inves in our world. However, that doesn't necessarily mean it will never happen again. The last incursion was thousands of years ago. Some might say we are long overdue for a repeat visit…" Everyone shuddered at that thought.

"AS-UNMITIGATEDLY-BADASS-AS-YOU-DESTROYING-THE-GOLDEN-FRUIT-WAS, WHY-DID-YOU-NOT-SIMPLY-DESTROY-DARK-OAK-WITH-THAT-PROJECTILE?" Omega asked.

Blaze smirked. "Oh, I had a reason for that…"

…

As Blaze approached the broken warlord, the ground rumbled slightly. The trees around them withered, the leaves crumbling, the fruits shriveling up and losing their golden hue, the bark beneath their feet, hardening as it petrified. In a matter of moments, Earthia's corpse rotted into a decayed husk, the amber encasing her cracking and turning brittle. "It's over," she told Dark Oak, standing only a few feet away from him. "You've lost."

Dark Oak just knelt there, staring at his hands, at the space where the Golden Fruit had once been. He'd been so close. _So close_ … "You should have hit me instead," he said quietly. "Then I would not have had to live with this terrible knowledge that all I have done, everything I've strived for, was all for nothing."

"Which is precisely WHY I hit the fruit, and not you," Blaze said coolly. "Letting you die would've been easy. Letting you live with the knowledge that you've been utterly defeated, that all your dreams have been completely shattered, that all the myriad atrocities you've committed accounted for absolutely nothing in the end… That, I think, is a far worse punishment, exactly what you deserve."

Dark Oak chuckled bitterly. "A very cruel mercy, Miss Blaze."

Blaze smirked savagely. "Well, I may be a hero, but I AM a demon."

"She will never forgive me, will she?" Dark Oak whispered.

"That is for her to decide… But no, I do not think she will," Blaze said. She didn't know whether he was referring to Cosmo or Earthia. She wasn't sure it mattered, really.

Dark Oak nodded solemnly, accepting this. "Nor should she. I certainly would not, in her shoes… What will you do with me, then?"

"Put you on trial, I suppose," Blaze said. "Despite what I said, a very large part of me is badly tempted to just kill you here and now… But I think it would set a bad precedent for my future reign if I got it by murdering my predecessor in cold blood. Because that's what it would be, really, if I were to kill you right now. You wouldn't even fight back, would you?"

"No," Dark Oak agreed. "I would not. There is no point." He chuckled sadly. "I don't believe I have enough strength left at this point to fight you even if I wanted to."

"You shall have a trial," Blaze continued. "You will have to be confronted with everything you've done, all the people whose lives you've ruined. They have a right to see you face justice for what you've done."

"And once I am found guilty," Dark Oak said, for neither of them had the slightest delusion that he might even for a second be found innocent. "You shall kill me?"

Blaze shrugged. "Perhaps. Or maybe I shall imprison you. Or banish you. As I said, killing you would be the easy way out. Making you live with what you've done… Now, that would be so much more satisfying."

Dark Oak shook his head in bleak amusement. "You really are a cruel one, aren't you? Certainly not the hero I had expected… But perhaps it is better this way. It will take more than a soft heart to deal with what is to come. Winning a war is the easy part. It's ruling the government that comes after that is less so. You will have no shortage of enemies, both within and without. Those who you once considered your closest allies may eventually become as big a threat to your rule as the greedy nations beyond our borders. You will need to be strong, to keep this new country you seek to forge united, to withstand the external and internal forces which will seek to tear it apart, if you are to have any hope of making your dream a reality."

"I know," Blaze said.

Dark Oak nodded, and then turned to face Blaze, his expression – – or what little of it Blaze could see through the twisted mess that was all that was left of his helmet – – blank, whatever emotions were stirring within him nearly impossible to discern. "Yes, you do, don't you? You've thought of this long and hard… I can tell, by the look in your eyes. The road before you will be long and hard… But then again, so was the road leading you to me." A ghost of a smile passed across his lips. "I suppose a part of me might not mind living, if there is a chance of seeing the world you wish to create. However, please promise me one thing."

Blaze nodded. "Do not worry. No harm shall come to your daughter. I owe her everything, and so she will be right at my side as I forge my new world into being."

"No, that's not it," Dark Oak said, much to her surprise. "Though I do thank you for that. Although my actions towards her may seem to imply otherwise, I am grateful for how you have done your best to protect her and be her friend through these difficult times. No, that's not what I wanted to ask you."

"Then… What?" Blaze asked, confused.

"The path of a ruler is a long and hard one. Along the way, your values, your ideals, everything you believe in, may be twisted by circumstance to become completely unrecognizable from where you started out. Remember that I, too, once had a dream, one which I thought was as beautiful as yours… And look at where it has led me. Please… Whatever you do, whatever might come… Do not turn out like me."

"… I won't. I promise. And besides…" Blaze smiled wryly. "I doubt my friends would let me turn out that way, anyway."

"No, they wouldn't, would they?" Dark Oak mused. "From what I've seen of them through my daughter's eye, they would not. If only I had had friends like yours, instead of vassals… Perhaps…" He shook his head. "It is irrelevant, I suppose. What's done is done. If I'm to face justice for my actions, I will do it unflinching. I am a king, and so can do nothing less."

…

"… Huh. Weird. I'm actually starting to feel… A little sorry for him?" Charmy murmured.

"That poor man… I mean, all the things he did were horrible and unforgivable, but… The way he just accepted his defeat and the loss of everything he'd worked for with such quiet dignity… It's so sad!" Cream whimpered, tearing up.

Mighty groaned. "I hate it when this happens. I almost prefer facing the irredeemably evil guys more. At least then, you don't have to worry about pitying the bastards…"

"I don't suppose he actually made it to trial?" Shadow asked.

Blaze closed her eyes sadly. "No. He did not."

…

Blaze nodded, and reached out a hand, ready to take Dark Oak to his fate…

When suddenly Nega's hovercraft, badly damaged from his clash with Gaim, burst out of the dying trees at the edge of the clearing. "Not so fast, Your Majesty! We aren't through yet!"

As Blaze snarled and turned to face the madman, flames igniting around her, Dark Oak wearily said, "It is over, Nega. Give it up. We've lost."

Nega chuckled darkly. "Oh, on the contrary, Excellency… YOU may have lost, but me? I'm just getting started. You didn't think I wouldn't have a contingency in place for just such an eventuality, did you?"

Blaze's hackles raised. "What are you up to?!"

Nega grinned cruelly and pushed a button on his control panel. "Why don't you see for yourself? Blaze, you may have ruined that poor fool's dreams for a better future… But I won't leave here until I'm satisfied I did everything I could to make sure that YOUR dreams were also destroyed!"

He laughed insanely, and didn't even bother getting out of the way when an angry Blaze hurled a fireball at him, engulfing his vehicle in flames and causing it to explode with him in it. A burning object was launched from the conflagration and hit the ground near the cat, who was unsurprised to see that it was Nega's head, his flesh melting away to reveal a cybernetic face, teeth locked in a grotesque rictus grin. "Tch… A robot. Why am I not surprised?" She turned to glance back over her shoulder at Dark Oak. "I don't suppose you have any idea where he really is, or what he's up to, do you?"

Dark Oak shook his head. "I'm afraid I have no idea. He didn't tell me everything, after all. I know that he harvested hundreds if not thousands of the fruits here for his own means, but I don't think that's…eh?" Much their surprise, a dimensional crack suddenly unzipped over his head. As Blaze shot a look at him, he quickly raised his hands and said, "Don't look at me, I didn't do that. I don't have enough power left to open one of those even if I wanted to."

Blaze frowned as she looked up at the crack. Something about it looked… Wrong. Not like a portal to Helheim, but a gateway to a world of absolute darkness. The black clouds swirling around the hole and the red electricity crackling around it as something slowly started to emerge, as well as the air of absolute malice exuding from it, didn't help matters.

" _ **YOMOTSUHEGURI! LOCK ON!"**_

…

"Yoma-what now?" Asked a confused Amy.

"Oh dear. Yomotsuheguri more or less translates to 'Hell Fruit' or 'Underworld Fruit' in Japanese," said a concerned Rouge.

"And I highly doubt anything that has 'Underworld' in its name can at all be friendly," Shadow commented.

"Hey, Espio, how come you don't know this Japanese stuff? Aren't you a ninja?" Knuckles asked.

"That's incredibly offensive and stereotypical," the chameleon said with a huff. "Not all ninjas have to be, or know, Japanese!"

"Yeah, just the ones who actually trained and didn't just take a correspondence course," Alonzo the elephant commented, appearing briefly long enough to get that quip in before disappearing again. Espio grumbled.

…

A large metal fruit resembling a bunch of grapes, only red and pulsating with darkness, descended from the hole. "That… Does not look like any Armor Part I recognize," Dark Oak said warily. Blaze narrowed her eyes, readying flames in her hands.

Abruptly, Gaim burst out of the trees. "Phew! Sorry it took me so long to get here, Nega got a lucky hit in and shot me… Oh no. No no no no no! Blaze, get away from that thing!" He yelled in horror when he saw the metal fruit descending from the dark portal.

"What is-" Blaze started, only for the mysterious fruit to release a wave of darkness which blasted her away, knocking her off her feet and sending her tumbling across the clearing into Gaim, who was nearly bowled over as he caught her.

" _ **HAIII! YOMOTSUHEGURI ARMS! THE UNDERWORLD! YOMI! YOMI! YOMI!"**_

The fruit unfolded over Dark Oak's head, forming red armor plating over his shoulders and back, a winged breastplate with a group of large green medallions with gold edges emblazoned over his torso, and covering his head with a red helmet that had a large green visor set in a gold faceplate with red-edged green fins extending from the sides and a green crest rising from the top. A tattered red cloth hung down from his waist, and his armor had turned black on the limbs, with red and gold on his lower arms and legs. He cried in pain as the armor sealed itself onto his body, red steam rising from the seams instead of juice. "AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH!" He howled, convulsing in agony. "It… Burns! IT BURNS! Get it off! _**GET IT OFF!"**_

"What… What's happening?" Asked a horrified Blaze as she stared at Dark Oak, desperately trying to claw off his armor, dark energy crackling off of him, bolts of energy striking the ground at her feet and causing her to flinch back.

"When Helheim came to my world, and everyone was battling to claim the Golden Fruit, my best friend at the time also entered the fight, consumed with his jealousy for me and a twisted desire for Mai, the woman who would one day become my wife. When Mai was chosen to be the Woman of the Beginning, and my friend learned what that meant for her, a mad scientist who he REALLY should've known better than to trust promised that he could safely remove the Fruit from Mai's body, but convinced him that I would never allow him to do that because I wanted the Fruit for myself (which was totally not true, obviously) so gave him a forbidden experimental Lock Seed to make him strong enough to fight me…the Yomotsuheguri, which was so powerful that it actually rivaled my Kiwami, with the drawback that every second you use it you experience horrifically crippling pain and it'll eventually kill you if you wear it for too long."

"And your friend thought it would be a good idea to use this?!" Blaze asked incredulously.

"He was going through a lot," Gaim said vaguely. "I let him inflict a fatal blow on me during our fight, so that I could get close enough to rip out and destroy the Yomotsuheguri Lock Seed before it could kill him. I survived because by that point I had almost completely finished my metamorphosis into… Well, what I am now."

"And your future wife? This… Mai?" Blaze asked.

"The mad scientist removed the Fruit from her, exactly as promised… Which killed her, of course, because the Fruit had bonded with her heart," Gaim said flatly. "The scientist had never intended to try and save her life, something he viciously mocked my friend for actually thinking he would have any interest in doing."

"I assume you killed him for that," Blaze said. She would have, in his shoes.

"I never got the chance to, actually,," Gaim said. "I was still recovering at the time, so the task fell to my chief rival… But that's another story. Anyway, Mai recovered, though just like me, she could never go back to what she was before."

"And your friend?" Blaze asked.

"He got better as well," Gaim confirmed. "My helping wake his older brother from a coma probably helped restore his sanity… But like I said, that's a whole other story, and not one we should be discussing right now."

…

"Hey yeah, why were you jabbering about all that when Dark Oak was in the middle of some horrifying transformation sequence?" Amy accused.

"Don't we do that all the time with most of the guys we fight?" Cream inquired.

"… No…" Amy said unconvincingly.

…

"If this new power has as many drawbacks as you say, I don't think we've anything to worry about." Blaze commented, frowning at Dark Oak. "In addition, you're more experienced than you were the last time you encountered something like this, and there's two of us."

"No, something feels different about this one," Gaim countered. "This version of the Yomotsuheguri feels… Stronger. Darker. Fouler. The one my friend used was still experimental. I get the feeling that this one is the final product. There's no telling what could happen…"

"Giant monster," Blaze said.

"Huh?" Gaim said in confusion.

"He'll turn into a giant monster. That sort of thing is par for the course for the final showdown, isn't it?" Blaze reasoned.

Gaim considered this for a moment, then laughed ruefully. "Not all the time, in my experience, but far too often for my liking." He stiffened. "Do you feel that?"

"Yes… His power just increased exponentially. Whatever's about to happen is going to take place any second now," Blaze said, tensing. "Brace yourself!"

"GAAAuuuAuuAuaaauUuGhhhHHH!" Dark Oak cried out, his body convulsing violently, armor bulging out in rather sickening places, Helheim plants snaking out of the cracks and crevices to wrap around his body and dig into the ground, rooting him in place. "I can't… I can't stop it! It hurts! It HURTS!" He trembled, his body starting to swell up and causing his armor to begin tearing apart, more and more Helheim growth spurting from the openings. "Blaze! My daughter… Tell her…GRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

…

"GRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH? That's an awfully strange thing to tell his daughter," Knuckles said, perplexed.

"I think he was trying to tell Blaze to tell his daughter that he loved her, but was cut off due to the physical trauma of his transformation," Espio said.

"Oh," the echidna said.

…

Dark Oak's armor shattered, and a tremendous bulbous mass of Helheim growth began to expand outwards in every direction, consuming the tree behind it and quickly spreading out to fill the clearing. "I think that's our cue to leave," Blaze said, grabbing Gaim and running into the dying orchard as the hungry mass rushed after them as it continued its expansion, almost literally on her heels. She frantically hurled fireballs back at it, but her flame seem to only do minimal damage to the mass, new growth quickly forming to replace whatever parts she destroyed. Gaim, struggling to hang onto her, hurled one of his locks ahead of them, quickly unfolding into a hover bike. Without being prompted, Blaze jumped onto it, and Gaim quickly climbed over her to grab the controls, starting the engine and blasting off just before they could be overwhelmed by the growth.

They rocketed into the sky as the green mass swelled up to completely fill the tree's crown, roots and tendrils emerging from its lower circumference as it grew higher and higher, digging into the bark of the tree and wrapping along its branches and trunk. As the tendrils made contact with the tree, its bark, which had already started taking on a rather petrified appearance ever since Blaze destroyed the Golden Fruit, now started to look outright dead as the growth that had once been Dark Oak drained whatever remaining nutrients and energy remained in the tree to fuel its own genesis. The branches shook, the leaves disintegrating and allowing sunlight to shine down across the entirety of kingdom of Solana for the first time in months, causing the army of Blaze's allies down below to flinch as their eyes, having grown used to a land of darkness, were once again exposed to the light of the sun (save for the phoenixes, who had been living above the canopy in their flying city ever since the crisis had began), causing many to cry out in pain as they were blinded by the light, or, in the case of the more photosensitive beings who hailed from deep underground, to desperately run for shelter.

They weren't blinded for long, however, as the grotesque mass bulged ever higher, soon blotting out the sun. It sent forth more feeders to gather power to sustain itself, causing the land around the tree, which had already taken on a rather desiccated look, to begin to crumble, forcing the ground forces to desperately make a rather harried retreat to try and outrun the collapsing earth. Tendrils burst out of the widening fissures and chasms, snatching up allied soldiers and Inves alike, constricting them as they squeezed every last ounce of life out of them until they disintegrated, energy flowing back up the vines and into the central mass, which was now starting to ooze down the upper third of the trunk, its growth gradually starting to slow.

As Blaze and Gaim watched in rapt horror from their high vantage point, the top of the mass writhed and undulated, three lumps forming on its surface. The tree groaned as the lumps abruptly burst, three massive serpentine necks ending in draconic heads surging up and outwards from the central mass, each all but identical, save for the placement and configuration of the horns on each head, as well as one being covered in black fur with purple eyes, one covered in english violet fur with lime green eyes, and one covered in mantis colored fur with teal eyes. The three heads stared out at the ravaged kingdom surrounding them, and the stunned army below, then opened their mouths and roared to the heavens, laser beams shooting out of their mouths and sweeping across the sky.

"You were right," Gaim said faintly. "Giant monster."

"Called it," she said dazedly.

…

"Yeah, that was kind of inevitable, wasn't it?" Vector agreed.

Shadow nodded. "Wouldn't be one of our adventures without the final adversary turning into some sort of horrific abomination of nature that needs to be destroyed posthaste for the fate of the world."

"So, what was this one called? Poison Oak? Dark Hydra? Tree of Destruction? Lethal Lotus?" Rouge asked.

"Final Mova," Blaze said.

There was a pause. "… The heck is a Mova?" Asked a confused Knuckles.

Blaze shrugged. "I have no idea."

"… Then why did you call it that?!" Amy demanded.

"I'm not the one who named it," Blaze said defensively. "Personally, I think that Poison Oak idea might have fit better. Well, too late now."

"So, I guess you went Super for the first time to fight it or something?" Mighty asked.

Blaze nodded. "Correct."

"I thought the first time you turned into Burning Blaze was when you and Sonic teamed up to fight the Egg Salamander between dimensions," Cream pointed out.

"It was," Blaze said. "Or rather, it was the first time I'd assumed that form in… Quite some time. Several decades ago, something… Happened to me that, for a long time afterwards, made it difficult for me to trust anyone again. My relationships with my friends and loved ones suffered, and so too did my connection to the Sol Emeralds, leaving me unable to call upon their power… Until I came here for the first time, and you and Sonic and the others helped me remember the importance of friendship, allowing me to move past… What happened back then, and reconnect with the people I care about back home, something for which I will always be grateful." Cream smiled, gratified that she'd been able to help her friend put her life back together.

"What happened to make you that way?" Knuckles asked, curious.

Blaze stiffened. "I would rather not talk about it."

Rouge frowned, a thought occurring to her. "Wait… I seem to remember you mentioning at least once that Sonic isn't the first person you've been in love with. Did-"

"I SAID I'd rather not talk about it," Blaze snapped, the grass around her feet igniting briefly. Everyone flinched back, and her Biter whimpered and cowered away from its mistress.

Sonic put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched, but slowly eased up as he rubbed her back, closing her eyes and taking a few deep breaths. "It was bad," Sonic said flatly, shooting everyone a glare. "And that's all you need to know. Ever. Got it?" Everyone quickly nodded, murmuring their assent.

"Geez, sure seems like you've got a lot of trauma up there…" Vector muttered to himself.

"With a life as long as hers, I'd be surprised if she DIDN'T," Rouge said, scowling at the crocodile.

"Something you know from experience?" Espio intuited.

Rouge frowned. "I may be immortal, but I'm still pretty young. While I've had some pretty nasty experiences over the years, I haven't had anything really soul-scarring… Yet. My mother, though… She's been around a long, long, long time, and seen and done things I still don't know the half of. There's a lot about her past she doesn't like to talk about that I have to learn from other sources, and given that my mother tells me EVERYTHING, and is a woman who refuses to be consumed with regrets, that should tell you something."

"I've been alive for a really, really long time, but I don't have any soul-scarring trauma," Knuckles complained. He considered for moment. "Well, unless you count that one time I walked in on Tikal and Chaos-"

"And I think that's more than any of us need to hear on that topic," Amy said quickly, covering Cream's ears.

"Actually, I'm kind of interested-" Tails started.

"AND I THINK THAT'S MORE THAN ANY OF US NEED TO HEAR ON THAT TOPIC," Amy said very loudly.

Sonic shot Tails a raised eyebrow. "Really?"

"Given that Tikal is a spiritual being made of pure energy and Chaos is a quasi-deity with a liquid body, from a scientific standpoint, I'd be rather curious as to how the mechanics of such a coupling would work," Tails said calmly.

Sonic raised his other eyebrow. "Science. That's your only reason to be interested?"

"Sonic, I haven't even reached puberty yet. That sort of thing only holds my interest in an intellectual capacity, and nothing more," Tails insisted.

"Oh, so you WEREN'T being a perverted little Fox that time I caught you snooping around Cosmo's underwear drawer-" Started Sonic.

"I lost a bet with Honey, all right?!" Tail snapped. "And besides, that wasn't Cosmo's underwear drawer, she doesn't even wear…um…" He coughed awkwardly, suddenly aware of everyone staring at him. "Aaaand let's move on from that awkward topic before anyone can ask how I know that."

"How did you know-" Knuckles started.

"So!" Blaze said loudly. "There we were, with a giant monster beneath us…"

…

"Oddly enough, this is not the first time I've fought a giant tree monster," Gaim said, staring down at the monster that would later be called Final Mova, though neither of them knew it at the time, so they just thought of it as being the transformed Dark Oak. As it flailed its heads about, occasionally spewing lasers into the air, seeds fell off its body, and whenever they hit the ground far below, they split apart and turned into Inves, targeting Blaze's army, which was struggling to pull itself together after this latest upheaval.

"Is that so," Blaze said faintly, desperately trying not to think about Honey, and Cosmo, and everyone else she cared about down below, hoping they were safe.

"Yeah, this one time, back before I became a space God, I got transported to a parallel universe where an alternate version of my home country was in the middle of a Civil War – – or, as we called it back in those days, a 'modern-day Sengoku Period' – – except all the warlords had a special kind of War God called a 'Bujin Rider' on their side, but the alternate version of myself was pure evil for some reason and led an army of monsters, intending to gain absolute power by defeating all the other Bujin Riders and capturing Mai, mistaking her for the Woman of the Beginning… Which, actually, she was, he just got her a bit early. Oh, and he also caused a nationwide drought. Anyway, when some friends and I had him on the ropes, he fused with a big Helheim tree and assumed his ultimate form, which was sort of like this… Well, except this tree's bigger, and the last time I didn't have to deal with a three headed dragon." Blaze stared at him. "… What?"

"Your world of origin is a very strange place," Blaze said.

Gaim snorted. "Trust me, I haven't even told you about the time where I wound up in another parallel world where everyone was weirdly obsessed with soccer, and I had to fight an artificial Golden Fruit that had somehow turned into an evil Kamen Rider-"

"A what?" Blaze interrupted, confused.

"Kamen Rider. Means Masked Rider, basically. It's, uh, what people like me are called back home," Gaim explained. "Since we wear masks and ride around on motorcycles. Except for the guy who came after me, he had a car, and not everyone who's a Rider actually HAS a bike, but...anyway, the artificial Fruit was corrupting the hearts of other Riders to make them fight each other so he could absorb their powers-I got turned evil briefly too, surprisingly-and I ultimately beat him in a soccer match with the help of another Rider who turned himself into a silver soccer ball… Except he later got better and tried to cause trouble again quite some time after I resolved the whole Helheim crisis, and I had to come back from my new planet to help my reformed best friend put him down, but that's a whole other story we probably don't have time to go over it now."

"No, I don't think so," Blaze agreed, bewildered.

…

"… Soccer? Really?" Asked a baffled Mighty.

"That doesn't seem so weird," Cream said. "After all, aren't there lots of shows about worlds where everyone's lives revolve around children's card games or other things like that?"

"Well, yeah, but those are cartoons, we're talking about real life here," the armadillo pointed out.

Shadow raised an eyebrow. "We live in a world where one of your best friends can almost casually break the sound barrier whenever he feels like it and is in a relationship with a half-demon Queen from another dimension, there's a floating continent flying around the skies guarded by an echidna too dense to realize he's immortal who's frankly pretty bad at his job-"

"Hey!" Knuckles shouted.

Shadow ignored him. "The world is routinely threatened by aliens, cosmic horrors, and a rotund mad scientist with a strange fixation on eggs, who, in a disturbing turn of events, happens to be the father of an adorable little rabbit who, as it turns out, is also the daughter of an infamous mob boss and apparently my great-niece, you spent several years in a coma fighting a war in the world of dreams, vampires exist,and secretly rule the world, and your former colleagues have somehow managed to avoid being found dead in a gutter despite being frankly rubbish detectives and having barely half a brain cell between them-"

"Hey!" The Chaotix protested.

"And it's the idea of a world where everyone is obsessed with soccer that seems unrealistic to you?" Shadow finished, ignoring the would-be sleuths.

"… Fair point," Mighty admitted. "My objection does seem kind of petty, when you put it into perspective."

"In an infinite multiverse, all things are possible," Rouge said wisely. "… Even the really weird things."

"LIKE-A-WORLD-WHERE-AMY-AND-SONIC-ARE-ACTUALLY-AN-ITEM?" Omega asked.

"Oddly enough, yes," Rouge said.

"Hey!" Amy protested.

"By the way, speaking of vampires, they apparently exist in Gaim's world too," Blaze spoke up. "Except they're made of stained glass, and eat life energy instead of blood."

Everyone paused to consider this for a moment. "… Stained glass? How the heck does that work?" Asked a confused Amy.

"Wouldn't they, like, break or something?" Charmy asked.

Blaze shrugged. "Maybe it's very durable stained-glass? He didn't elaborate. Apparently another hero on his world took care of them by becoming their King or something. It wasn't really a thing he had to deal with."

"Right… So, back to the final battle?" Silver prompted.

"Right, that," Blaze said.

…

"So, how exactly did you defeat this evil tree version of yourself?" Blaze asked, bringing them back to the subject of greatest importance.

"The Woman of the Beginning version of Mai traveled back in time to give us special Rider-themed Lock Seeds which we used to power ourselves up enough to fight back," Gaim said. "Also, I teamed up with a wizard who was part-Dragon or something, or had a Dragon inside his soul, or… I dunno, I was never entirely clear on that."

"Ah," Blaze said, understanding now. "So a last-minute deus ex machina transformation power up. There's lots of precedent for that."

Gaim nodded. "Yeah. I don't think I'm going to need one this time – – I'm plenty powerful enough already – – but you… Err, I don't suppose YOU would happen to have some sort of last-minute deus ex machina power-up lying around?"

"Well, I have this kingdom's greatest treasure, seven magic emeralds of unlimited power charged with the positive emotions and hopes and dreams of the entire realm…" Blaze said, taking out the Sol Emeralds.

"That should do it," Gaim said.

"Only… I have absolutely no idea how to use them," Blaze said, somewhat embarrassed.

"Don't worry, these things usually have a way of working themselves out when you need them most," Gaim assured her. "They wouldn't be deus ex machinas otherwise. Alternatively… I could ask my wife to grow something for you, it wouldn't be the first time-"

"I'd rather not," Blaze said firmly. "While I'm glad to have you by my side, I've been fighting the powers of Helheim too long to be comfortable with using them myself. Eating those fruits was one thing, but this… Might be a step too far."

Gaim nodded. "Understood. But in the meantime, we need to find a way to stop that monster."

"The biggest threat it seems to pose is that its sheer existence is sucking even more of the life from the land to sustain itself," Blaze observed. "That, and it's generating a seemingly endless horde of monsters to attack my troops."

"And mine," Gaim added. "Remember, I brought forces of my own along to help out. While most of them are relatively mindless, replaceable Inves drones, there are also several Overlords, including my wife and children."

"The people I care about are at risk as well," Blaze thought anxiously, thinking of her friends, and Honey.

"I can call more Inves for reinforcements," Gaim offered.

"And I can summon more demons," Blaze added. "But it won't be enough if we can't take out the source."

"I sensed before that you somehow managed to destroy the Golden Fruit," Gaim said. "Which is no easy feat, take it from me. I think the only reason I was able to defeat that evil one I mentioned before was because it was artificial… But then again, given that he came back later to cause trouble long after everything was over, it just goes to show you how durable those things are. Do you think you could use the same attack to take down this monster?"

Blaze thought about this for a moment, and then shook her head. "I'm afraid not. It's too big. The amount of energy I'd need to channel to annihilate that thing in a single shot would not only kill me, but probably destroy everything for miles, including our own people."

"I could evacuate everyone through cracks, but you're right, that's not an option," Gaim agreed. "You don't think a smaller version would work?"

"Considering that it's constantly draining energy from everything around it, it wouldn't surprise me if it could just regenerate," Blaze said. "My attack annihilates matter down to the smallest particle, but if enough of it is left to just regrow itself…" She made a face. "Of course, it's nothing but pointless conjecture in the first place. I can't use that attack twice in quick succession, doing it even once takes a lot out of me. It'll take a while before I can do it again… Unless you have another one of those magic energy-replenishing fruits?"

"Not on me, unfortunately. My wife might be able to grow one, but I don't think we have time. We'll have to do this the hard way then," Gaim said. "Maybe if we cut off the energy flow…?"

"Have our forces attack the roots, you mean, while we take on the main body?" Blaze intuited. "Considering how big the tree is, and how deep the roots go, that might be difficult. But… If they take out enough of the tendrils feeding into the tree…"

"It won't stop the energy flow, but weaken it enough so that we can attack the rest of the monster, and hope that we can damage it faster than it can regenerate," Gaim finished. "Sounds like a plan."

"Then let's get started," Blaze said, concentrating. Hundreds of Takers swirled into life all around the great tree and started hurling fireballs at the tendrils snaking down the trunk, setting the plant mass ablaze. Worms burst out of the surface of the trunk and started spewing fireballs or simply taking large bites out of the tendrils, burning more of them away.

They were soon joined by Inves emerging from cracks Gaim opened. They looked different from the ones Blaze had been fighting for the last few months; taller, bulkier, grayer, sacrificing the thin litheness Blaze was accustomed to for sheer muscle mass. They were carried through the air by dragonfly wings which looked rather incongruous on such creatures' backs, but seemed to be surprisingly good at keeping them aloft. They started clawing at the tendrils and ripping them apart with their rather impressive number of oversized fangs, revealed when their heads split open to reveal gargantuan jaws. Blaze's minions hesitated for a moment upon seeing creatures that felt similar to the ones they been fighting for the last few months joining them, but since their Mistress bade them leave them alone, they could do nothing but obey, so kept on attacking the tendrils instead.

The forces on the ground took notice of this, realized what their leaders must be up to, and hastened to follow their example. While most of the ground forces continued to fight the Inves constantly raining down from above, others started attacking the monster's tendrils which kept emerging from of the ground here and there. Those who could fly took to the skies, and Blaze was overjoyed when she saw her Dragon brood soaring alongside the phoenixes and their airships, bathing the surface of the trunk in great curtains of flame, eradicating more of the monstrous vines. The monster shrieked in agony as it felt bits of itself being destroyed, and retaliated by sprouting thorns from the tendrils to try and skewer those that were attacking them, firing spouts of water from other sections of the tendrils to try and knock its assailants away, causing spiked vines to erupt from the sides of the trunk to swat at and smash those clinging to its sides, and sweeping laser beams from its three massive jaws to try and wipe out the pesky fleas gathered at its base. Unfortunately for the creature, these attacks were not quite as effective as it might have liked; for each Inves or demon it destroyed, 10 more materialized to take their place. Additionally, the sheer amounts of fire the Phoenix ships and dragons were hurling at the plant growth snaking down the trunk seemed to be destroying more of it faster than it could grow new appendages to defend itself, and while the laser beams managed to wipe out large numbers of those on the ground, the brunt of their force was deflected by powerful magical barriers conjured up by the combined might of all the spell weavers in Blaze's army, and by the golden tinge interwoven through the shield, Blaze suspected Gaim's wife was helping augment their power.

"Its power is weakening," Blaze noted, seeing the central mass of the beast lose some of its eerie glow, the heads not waving about with quite the same amount of vigor they had before. "Now's our chance!"

"Hang on tight!" Gaim shouted, gunning his motor and steering his bike straight for the monster.

It noticed their approach, snarled, then opened all three mouths and fired lasers in unison, sweeping them through the air to try and knock them out of the sky. Gaim masterfully maneuvered through the beams one-handed, firing his gun constantly with the other while Blaze hurled an endless volley of fireballs over his shoulders, peppering the beast's heads with a constant barrage of projectiles, which, unfortunately, seemed to irritate it more than actually hurt it. "It's going to be difficult to get close enough to do some serious damage at this rate," Gaim grunted in frustration.

"The let's give it something else to keep it occupied," Blaze declared, summoning more demons on the tree's branches. Golems started punching and hurling balls of molten rock at the monster's main body, while Biters climbed up and started gnawing at the beast's flesh, burning bits of it away with every contact from their fiery forms, and Takers swooped around the heads, pelting them with fireballs. Hissing in pain and annoyance, the heads stopped their beam assault and started flailing about, trying to knock their attackers away while attempting to regrow the parts that were getting damaged.

"Now we're talking!" Gaim whooped, steering their ride towards the monster.

"Since there's three heads, we'll have to split up to take them down," Blaze noted.

"Uh, there's only two of us. If we do that, there'll still be one left," Gaim pointed out.

"Which is why you're going to have to sacrifice another vehicle, I'm afraid," Blaze said.

Gaim sighed. "Yeah, I was afraid you were going to say that. We're lucky these things literally grow on trees back where I come from."

"What a strange ecosystem that must be," Blaze commented.

"Trust me, that's not the weirdest thing that grows on trees back home," Gaim assured her as he aimed the bike towards the central head of the three, growing larger by the second as they shot towards it. "All right… Autopilot is locked in, and I've primed the self-destruct. You ready for this?"

"What sort of question is that?" Blaze quipped, eyes fixed on the head she'd already marked for her target.

Gaim chuckled. "A very poor one, obviously. Let's go!"

They jumped off at the same time, each of them leaping in a different direction and calling off their minions to stop the heads' frenzied swaying and make it more likely they would actually hit their target. The central head, free from the annoyances which had been buzzing around it, saw the flying motorcycle streaking towards it and instinctively opened its mouth wide, snatching it up in its jaws and viciously shaking it about.

It had precisely .0000001% of a picosecond to regret this just before the bike exploded spectacularly, completely vaporizing the head and sending a chain reaction of blasts coursing down the monster's gullet, ripping the remaining neck apart and splattering plant matter everywhere. The remaining two heads shrieked in agony, their open mouths providing big targets for the two heroes aiming for them.

As he approached his head, Gaim snapped his Musou Sabre into place on his gun, pulling the trigger as he powered up his attack.

" _ **1, 10, 100, 1000, 10,000, 100,000,000, 1000,000,000,000, FRUITS BASKET: KIWAMI CHARGE!"**_

"HINAWA DAIDAI MUSOU ZAN!" He roared, raising his sword over his head, the blade extending dozens of meters as it ignited with golden energy, bringing it down with a terrific chop that cleaved the head in two and kept going as gravity pulled Gaim downwards, slicing his blade through the monster's flesh as he fell parallel to the beast's neck until he reached the organic mound of plant mass it was growing from, releasing a flash of golden energy which caused about a third of it as well as the two halves of the head and neck he had bisected to vaporize, juice and energy projections of fruit flying everywhere.

At the same time, Blaze curled into a ball and started spinning as fast as she could, flames swirling around her until they engulfed her completely, turning her into a fiery meteor of destruction as she shot towards the last head. The monster foolishly opened its mouth wide to receive her, jaws snapping shut when she was inside…

Only to begin convulsing and shrieking in agony as Blaze tore through its innards, leaving an all-consuming trail of fiery destruction in her wake, incinerating the monster from within. As it writhed about, Blaze burst out of its neck and flew back in again and again, perforating the monster's gullet repeatedly as she worked her way down its length, leaving burning holes behind her which consumed even more of the creatures planty body. Finally, she flew right down the monster's esophagus and into the mound it was growing from, triggering a tremendous conflagration which obliterated what was left of the neck and annihilated another sizable amount of the beast's biomass.

As what remained of the creature's form started to tremble, the last flailing neck began to slow in its movements, the flow of green ooze from its decapitated stump starting to bulge outwards, a new head beginning to grow to replace the one Gaim's bike destroyed. Gaim and Blaze glanced each other, nodded, then powered up, Gaim, pointing his gun at what remained of the monster while Blaze cupped her hands and started charging up an intensely powerful fireball.

" _ **FRUITS BASKET: KIWAMI CHARGE!"**_

"This is how your world ends!" Blaze roared, hurling her fireball at the same time as Gaim fired his gun. The two projectiles streaked towards the rippling heap of biomass and collided, engulfing it in a tremendous explosion which sent balls of fire and sparkly energy projections of fruit flying everywhere.

The partially-regenerated neck was blasted off the body and flew through the air, tumbling end over end as it arced overhead and started falling down the side of the tree, its half-formed head gurgling in anguish. Bulges started forming on its sides as it struggled to grow wings, but before it could even finish generating them it was covered in demons and Inves which violently started to rip it apart, and then the dragons and Phoenix warships flew in and finished the job with their fiery payloads, reducing the severed neck to a great mass of burning charcoal which hit the ground with a tremendous crash, the ground forces barely managing to get away from the impact site in time. The burning mass twitched a few times, and while it was probably due to death throes rather than some last desperate attempt to recover itself, the army below took no chances and immediately rushed in to hit it with everything they had left, pounding and blasting at the corpse until there was nothing left but smoldering ashes.

Blaze and Gaim watched all this from atop one of the dead branches of the great tree, and after a moment, the armored warrior glanced at the cat. "'This is how your world ends?'"

Blaze flushed. "I've been trying to think up a good pre-mortem one-liner or catchphrase. Something memorable and fitting. I figured, you know, since I'm a destroyer of worlds, but I don't actually destroy worlds anymore, but I'm going to do my best to ruin the lives of my enemies, it seemed…"

"No, no, I see where you're coming from," Gaim said quickly. "It wasn't bad, I've certainly heard worse, and weirder back home. Most of the other heroes like me… Well, like I used to have something like that."

"What's yours?" Blaze asked.

"Well, you've heard it a bunch already. You know…'This is my stage now?'" Gaim reminded her.

"Oh, right," Blaze said. "What does that even mean, anyway?"

"Well, you see, back before I was a space God, heck, back before I was even a superhero, I was a dancer-" Gaim began to explain, when suddenly the tree started to shake beneath their feet.

Blaze stumbled, but regained her footing quickly before she could fall off the side of the branch. Her vision swirled, and she had to squeeze her eyes shut and take a deep breaths as the adrenaline from all the fighting wore off and she abruptly remembered that she was, as a matter of fact, terrified of heights. "Off the top of my head, I can think of two possible explanations for that."

Gaim nodded. "The first is that this place is starting to fall apart now that the Golden Fruit is gone, and Dark Oak – – or rather, that THING he became – – can't sustain it any longer…"

"Or… We aren't through yet," Blaze said warily.

They looked each other unhappily. "I really don't want to turn around," Gaim complained.

"If there's something back there, it won't go away just because we're ignoring it," Blaze said tiredly.

Gaim sighed in resignation and turned to look behind him at the same time as she did. The fire and smoke from the explosion they had caused was already dying down, revealing that while they had burned off all of the biomass occupying the tree's crown, in doing so, they had revealed what looked an awful lot like some kind of a giant seed… Or perhaps, a cocoon? Whatever it was, it was pulsating, and cracks were starting to form on its surface, sickly light pouring out from the fissures. It was significantly smaller than the biomass that had been encasing it… But the power levels they could sense from it were staggering, and growing rapidly by the second.

The two heroes exchanged exasperated looks. "A third form," Gaim complained. "Of COURSE it had to have a third form."

"Well, technically, this is the SECOND form, if you don't count Dark Oak as form one," Blaze corrected him, aware as she did so she was just being pedantic.

"It damn well better be the final one this time," Gaim griped, attaching his sword to his gun and grabbing a few locks. "Think we can finish it before it hatches?"

"Has anyone in the history of ever successfully managed to?" Blaze snarked, forming fire in her hands.

"Not to my knowledge, but there's a first time for everything," Gaim commented, raising his blade.

The seed/cocoon/chrysalis/whatever started throbbing, faster and faster, as more and more cracks spread across its surface. The light shining through the cracks grew brighter and brighter… And then, with a tremendous crash, the object shattered, a tremendous wave of power blasting outwards and buffeting Gaim and Blaze, who staggered back and had to brace themselves to keep from being knocked off the branch, which was swaying and shaking beneath them. A massive Lotus flower rose up from the glowing, writhing mass of Helheim growth convulsing and churning on itself where the seed/cocoon/Crystal/whatever had been, unfolding to reveal a grotesque… _Thing_ that was the same shape as Dark Oak's upper body, except instead of being made of armor it was a shifting, roiling mass of leaves and vines and biomass taking on a vague approximation of the mutated beyond recognition warlord's form, glowing yellow eyes made of fruit gazing out blindly at them from above a round, sucking mouth filled with grinding, rotating thorns for teeth. It made a wet, wheezing noise as it inhaled and exhaled, its entire form changing consistency with each breath, vines lashing out from its back before getting sucked back in. It made a rattling, gurgling, sound before letting out a horrific shriek which shattered Blaze's eardrums and caused her to cry out in pain as she stumbled backwards, clasping her hands over her ears.

"Well, that's one ugly sonofabitch," Gaim muttered.

"Did that evil clone of yours happen to look anything like this?" Blaze grunted, feeling a splitting headache.

"No, but then again, I never saw what he looked like under his armor, so I can't be certain," Gaim admitted.

"Then we had better take him out before he gets even uglier, assuming that's actually possible," Blaze snarled.

They started rushing down the branch, heading towards the abomination… And were startled when the ground began to tremble beneath their feet. "Oh, what now?!" Blaze snapped.

She got her answer when the monstrosity crossed its arms, the petals of its Lotus folding up around itself, and then it slammed into the ground, shaking the tree and causing a wave of green energy to ripple out from it, washing across the surface of the tree, out to the branches and down the trunk. Gaim and Blaze hopped over the wave, but were puzzled when nothing seemed to happen. "What was that?" Blaze wondered.

"I don't…Uh-Oh," Gaim said, stiffening as he sensed something.

Blaze tensed. "Uh-oh? I don't like uh-ohs."

"Neither do I," Gaim groaned as the branch they were standing on began to shake again, and green cracks started zigzagging outwards from the abominable Lotus to cover the entire surface of the tree. The light emanating from the cracks grew brighter and brighter… Until, with a tremendous splintering sound, the bark shattered, flailing roots and vines covered in thorns and buds and flowers and pods with snapping, gnashing jaws at their ends bursting outwards in every direction, transforming the tree from a towering wooden pillar to a gargantuan mass of writhing, shrieking plant life lashing out at everything around it. The ground trembled and quaked as the monstrosity tugged at its roots, until with a tremendous upheaval that sent great masses of dirt and stone flying everywhere, crushing a great deal of the ground troops and forcing those in the air to scatter in panic, the great horror managed to rip its roots at least partially out of the ground, using them to lever the main mass out of the soil and into the air, it's great shadow covering even more of the land as it rose higher and higher still into the air, leaving a crumbling chasm beneath it which swallowed up all who weren't fast enough to get away from the edge in time and exposing a gargantuan mouth on its underside, with teeth made from colossal thorns and dozens of slithering vines for tongues, lashing out to snatch up anything that got too close. The atrocity of nature howled from its hundreds of mouths, its cries of awakening echoing to every corner of the increasingly desiccated land of Solana, more and more energy being drained through the roots to sustain the giant plant, leaving nothing but crumbling soil and death behind.

…

"Holy shit," said a dazed Mighty.

"Yep, that's definitely final boss material," Vector stated.

"I don't think I'm ever going to be able to look at a flower or tree the same way again," Cream whimpered.

"Welp, looks like I'm burning my garden when I get home," Amy said with a too-wide grin.

"And I suddenly have a strange urge to promote cutting down the rainforests," Rouge commented.

"Never mention that to Cosmo if you're ever around her. She wouldn't take it very well," Blaze said sternly.

"Wait, I thought was already called the Final Mova. Doesn't having a second form imply that it isn't actually the 'Final' Mova?" Charmy pondered.

"Not to mention we still don't really know what a 'Mova' is," Espio pointed out.

"Well, in Disgaea 4, they have four chapters at the end of the game, all of which claim to be the 'final' one," Tails pointed out.

"How does that work?" Asked a confused Amy.

"EACH-'FINAL'-CHAPTER-IS-HYPED-UP-TO-BE-THE-END-OF-THE-GAME, ONLY-FOR-A-COMPLETELY-UNEXPECTED-DEVELOPMENT-TO-HAPPEN-AT THE-END-OF-THE-CHAPTER-TO-INDICATE-THAT-NO, IN FACT-, THE-GAME-ISN'T-OVER-JUST-YET. THE-CHARACTERS-THEMSELVES-GET-FED-UP-WITH-IT-AFTER-A-WHILE," Omega explained.

"How could they possibly be aware of that?" Asked the perplexed Cream.

"DISGAEA-IS-AN-INCREDIBLY-SELF-AWARE-AND-COMEDIC-SERIES. AT-SOME-POINT, PRETTY-MUCH-EVERY-CHARACTER-SHOWS-SOME-LEVEL-OF-AWARENESS-THAT-THEY-ARE-IN-A-VIDEO-GAME," Omega elaborated. "HECK, THERE IS-A-RECURRING-CHARACTER-WHO-IS-CONSTANTLY-TRYING-TO-HIJACK-THE-GAME-SO-SHE-CAN-BE-THE-MAIN-CHARACTER-BECAUSE-HER-OWN-GAME-WAS-NEVER-ACTUALLY-PRODUCED."

"How very meta," Mighty commented.

"I wasn't aware you were a fan, Omega," Rouge remarked.

"IT-IS-PART-OF-A-FRANCHISE-WHERE-PRETTY-MUCH-EVERY-MAJOR-CHARACTER-HAS-RIDICULOUSLY-OVERPOWERED-ATTACKS-AND-CAN-POTENTIALLY-DESTROY-ENTIRE-WORLDS-AND-THE-WEAKEST-CREATURE-EXPLODES-SPECTACULARLY-AT-THE-SLIGHTEST-PROVOCATION. PLUS, THE STRATEGY-BASED-GAMEPLAY-EXERCISES-MY-TACTICAL-PROCESSORS. WHY-WOULDN'T-I-LIKE-IT?" Omega said smugly.

"Changing the subject away from something I don't understand in the slightest-" Knuckles began.

"Like that's new," Shadow muttered.

The echidna glared at the black hedgehog, then continued. "How the heck were you supposed to defeat something like that?! I don't think even the biggest thing Sonic's ever defeated was that large!"

"Well, I wouldn't go _that_ far," Sonic said defensively.

"I'M-ASSUMING-WITH-FIRE, AND-GREAT-QUANTITIES-OF-IT," Omega speculated.

"Pretty much, yeah," Blaze said. "But to get enough fire to do it, I had to look within."

"Within what?" Charmy asked.

"Within herself," Shadow said. "Isn't that always the way?"

…

Blaze was falling.

She could feel the wind on her fur, the acceleration tugging at her clothes, the force of gravity gleefully pulling her down towards her messy and on the ground below. She could hear the hisses and shrieks of the abomination as it tried to snatch her up in its jaws and tendrils, only to recoil in pain whenever it made contact with the fiery aura wrapped around her form, causing her to look like a falling star as she streaked downwards. It might even have looked beautiful, from a distance… But of course, most people try not to think about how a falling star must feel when it inevitably hits the ground.

She was also standing on a ring of debris surrounding a pit of lava in the middle of a vast, burning metropolis, staring up at a titanic beast whose body seemed to be made of lava with four arms and a head armored in molten rock, looking down at her in disapproval. She could feel the heat of the flames on her fur, smell the sulfur in the air, hear the howls of the demonic horde scavenging through this broken world.

She saw nothing strange or contradictory about these two irreconcilable realities. Then again, that might have been the concussion talking. At least, she was pretty sure she had a concussion. Her head certainly hurt enough for her to have one, and she seemed to be having trouble focusing on what was before her, slipping back and forth between the world where she was falling to her death and the world where a giant lava demon was glaring at her. She wondered, briefly, which world was real and which one was a hallucination caused by her injury. Maybe both were. Maybe neither were. Who could say, really?

 _ **So that's it?**_ The demon asked, snorting in disgust. _**After all that, you're going to die from falling? I expected better of you, Blaze.**_

"Well, it's not the way I would've chosen to go," Blaze admitted. "Not that I would've chosen to go at all, honestly. But I don't really see what I can do about it, given that I can't fly."

She did not find anything strange about the fact that she was having a civil conversation with a giant fire demon. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. Again, that might just been the concussion, but something about the creature felt… Familiar. Not exactly in a reassuring way, but familiar nonetheless.

 _ **Well, you're going to have to do something, and soon**_ , the demon grunted. _**Because if you die, then everyone you love will die by my hand.**_

Blaze blinked. "Why's that?" She asked. Oddly, she didn't feel enraged or horrified by the demon's claim. It didn't feel like a threat, just a simple statement of fact.

 _ **Because if you die, I will be free. And there will be nothing to stop me from burning this world and all in it to ashes, as I have done on countless worlds before.**_

"Couldn't you choose to just, I don't know… _Not_ do that?" Blaze asked.

The demon shook its head. _**Can the wind choose not to blow? Rain not to fall? Fire not to burn? I am, at my core, an elemental force of destruction. I will destroy everything. Not because I wish to, but simply because it is what I am. I can be nothing else… Not without you holding me back, anyway.**_

"Oh. That is unfortunate," Blaze said. "Isn't there anything I can do to stop that?"

 _ **Yes. Don't die,**_ the demon said.

"Right. Any suggestions on how to not to do that?" Blaze asked. The demon shrugged. "That is profoundly unhelpful."

 _ **I'm better at ending lives than saving them,**_ the demon said defensively.

"Who are you, anyway?" Blaze asked, wondering why she hadn't inquired sooner. "I feel like I… Like I know you. Like I've always known you."

 _ **That's because you have,**_ the demon said. _**I am you, and you are me.**_

"You're me? I thought I was me," Blaze said in confusion.

 _ **You are you,**_ the demon confirmed. _**But you are also me, just as I am me, as well as you.**_

"So I am me, and also you. And you are you, and also me," Blaze said slowly.

 _ **Correct**_ , the demon said.

Blaze frowned. "I'm not sure if it's the concussion talking, but that doesn't entirely make sense."

The demon chuckled. _**That's because you aren't asking the right questions.**_

Blaze considered this for a moment. "If you're me, then why don't you look like me? And if I'm you, why don't I look like you?"

Suddenly, the demon was no longer a towering monstrosity, but was standing right in front of her, looking like an almost exact duplicate of herself… or at least, an exact duplicate of herself with skin made of molten rock like one of her demonic minions. _**Does this help?**_

"Oddly enough, it does. Though again, that might be the concussion." She regarded her molten mirror for a moment, then said, "So if you are me, and I am you… Then who are we?"

The demon grinned. It wasn't a particularly pleasant thing to look at. _**We are**_ **Iblis** _ **.**_

…

Rouge frowned. "Iblis… Iblis… Something about that name seems familiar."

"Another one of the countless supernatural entities your mom told you about?" Knuckles asked.

"Possibly," Rouge murmured, drawing out each syllable. "I feel like it's on the tip of my tongue… Sorry, I can't quite seem to recall…"

"SCANNING-DATABANKS," Omega beeped. "RESULT-FOUND: IN-ISLAMIC-THEOLOGY, IBLIS-IS-A-BEING-CREATED-FROM-FIRE-WHO-WAS-ALLOWED-TO-MINGLE-WITH-ANGELS-IN-THE-HEAVENS-UNTIL-HE-REJECTED-THE-COMMAND-OF-GOD-TO-BOW-BEFORE-ADAM."

"Why did he do that?" Cream asked.

Omega shrugged. "PERHAPS-BECAUSE-HE-DIDN'T-WANT-TO-BOW-TO-A-PATHETIC-INFERIOR-ORGANIC-LIFEFORM? I-CAN-SYMPATHIZE."

"Somehow I don't think this is the same Iblis," Espio commented.

"Yeah, wouldn't it be speaking Arabic if it were?" Amy suggested.

"None of the djinn or other beings I met when I was in the world of the Arabian Nights spoke Arabic," Sonic pointed out.

"Why not?" Mighty asked.

Sonic scratched his head and shrugged. "Maybe because I entered a version that had been translated into English? I dunno. Anyway, Erazor Djinn said that the Ifrit Golem was condemned to the fiery depths of… Someplace by a being called Iblis, but given the context, it was probably the Islamic one, not the entity Blaze is related to."

"Why do they have the same name, then?" Charmy asked.

"Well, we once fought a demonic monster called Ifrit, but I don't believe it bore any resemblance to this golem creature," Shadow pointed out. "Sometimes things just have similar names. After all, it's not like regular people have a monopoly on names, do they? As much as it pains me to admit it… It's not as if I'm the ONLY Shadow in the world…" The others murmured in agreement.

"So if you didn't have some sort of Islamic devil inside of you… What IS Iblis?" Amy asked dubiously.

"I'm getting to that," Blaze said.

…

"Iblis," Blaze repeated, trying the name out. It sounded familiar. Very familiar. Hadn't she been calling herself the Avatar of Iblis for quite some time? Funny how she'd never really thought about what that meant until now. "And who… No, wrong question. WHAT is Iblis?"

The demon nodded, pleased by her query. _**Iblis is fire. Iblis is destruction. Iblis is death. Iblis is the wrath of a God, the Flames of Disaster, the destroyer of worlds. Iblis is… Iblis.**_

Blaze thought about this for a moment. The monster's answer had the ring of truth to it, but something seemed… Lacking. Then she asked, "Then why are we two, instead of one? Why am I Blaze, instead of… Well, like you?"

 _ **Ah**_ , Iblis said. _**Now that is a tale worth telling.**_

And suddenly, they were standing in a church of some kind, before an alcove with a steady white flame burning in it. _**Once upon a time, there was a kingdom which worshiped a super-dimensional being called Solaris, whom they revered as a God of time and the sun, embodied by the flame you see before you. Thanks to its blessings, they were able to ensure prosperity and peace for their realm.**_

 _ **And then, one idiot ruined everything.**_

They found themselves in a round metal room, with a group of human scientists frantically working on instruments surrounding a tall cylinder which filled the center of the room with volatile energy crackling wildly inside of it. A man with a regal bearing who was clearly the leader of the scientists was desperately pleading with whatever was inside the cylinder to hear his voice. The demon regarded this man angrily. _**The ruler of the kingdom attempted to harness Solaris's power, hoping to use it to gain mastery over time itself.**_

"Why?" Blaze asked.

The demon shrugged. _**Why do mortals always seek control over time? To change what has come before. To undo past mistakes. Anything to avoid dealing with the consequences of their actions, I suppose.**_

"It didn't work the way he hoped, I take it," Blaze intuited.

The demon sighed. _**Does it ever?**_

A little girl ran into the room. The ruler frantically turned and shielded her with his body as the cylinder exploded, rocking the room and flinging everyone away. After flaring and crackling angrily for a few moments, the energy died down, the light fading to reveal a molten sphere which crumbled apart, its pieces dissolving as it hit the ground, turning into a black pool of darkness which oozed away while a crackling flame, sparked to life by the fracture of the sphere, flew off in another direction entirely. Blaze thought she saw two other figures enter from the other side of the room, but they seemed… Blurry, indistinct, and not just because of all the smoke still pouring from the broken apparatus in the middle of the room.

 _ **The experiment went horribly wrong,**_ the demon said, stating the obvious. _**Solaris was split in two.**_

"You and me…" Blaze murmured.

 _ **No, actually. All that is us – – Iblis – – was in that flame**_ , the demon explained.

"Then what was that shadow?" Blaze asked, confused.

The demon shrugged _ **. I'm not sure, actually. The other half of Solaris, I suppose? I don't know what happened to it. It never tried to recombine with us. I thought I sensed it a few times before the end, but…**_ She (Could it be considered a she? Well, it certainly looked female at the moment …) Shrugged. _**This is our story, not its, anyway.**_

…

"Solaris… That name also sounds vaguely familiar," Rouge muttered.

"Oddly enough, I feel like I've heard it somewhere as well," Silver said with a frown.

"Blaze, I don't suppose you happened to catch the name of the kingdom which worshiped this entity, did you?" Rouge asked.

Blaze frowned. "No, I did not. Why?"

Rouge grimaced. "Sorry, I thought for a minute that I… Nevermind. It's not important."

"Wonder whatever happened to that shadow…" Mighty wondered.

"So do I," Shadow said, frowning when he realized he'd said. Something about that shadow felt… Strangely familiar. Silver, strangely, felt the same, but said nothing about it.

…

The scene changed again, and now they were in a small chamber, where the ruler of the land, clearly wounded and only moments from death, had put the little girl from before on a slab beneath the crackling flame and was using a white gemstone to channel the fire's energy into her prone form. There was a figure standing next to the man, but again, Blaze had trouble looking at it, her eyes seeming to slide away whenever she tried to focus on it.

 _ **The ruler, in a desperate attempt to correct his grave error and stop us from destroying the world-**_

"Why were we going to destroy the world?" Blaze interrupted.

 _ **We were born from the agony and rage of a God being tortured so horribly that it literally split in half just to try and make the pain stop. Why do you think?**_ The demon snarked.

"Fair point," Blaze conceded.

 _ **Like I was saying, the ruler, in a desperate attempt to correct his grave error and stop us from destroying the world, used a magic stone to seal us within his own daughter, telling her before he died that so long as she did not cry, the seal would remain intact, and we would never emerge again,**_ the demon continued.

Blaze stared at her counterpart in disbelief. "… He told his own daughter, just before _dying_ right in front of her, that she could never cry. Ever. No matter what. Or the world would end?"

 _ **More or less**_ , the demon said. _**Astonishingly, she managed to go 10 whole years without shedding a single tear.**_

Blaze stared at the Princess incredulously as her father hugged her one last time. "… I don't know if that makes her one of the strongest individuals I've ever met, or a complete and utter sociopath."

…

"I hear that," Amy agreed. "There's no way I'd be unable to cry if either of my moms died."

Cream nodded sadly. "If that flame were sealed within me, I'd probably break it within minutes. I'm very sensitive."

"And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, sweetie," Shadow assured her.

"That kind of seems like a stupid seal, anyway," Knuckles complained. "Why would CRYING do the trick?"

Blaze shrugged. "I honestly have no idea."

" I've heard of stupider release conditions on ancient seals," Rouge commented.

"Oh yeah? Like what?" Charmy asked.

"Well, there's this one powerful evil spirit trapped behind a door and the key is some guy's penis-"

"Aaaaaaaand we're moving on," Sonic said quickly.

…

 _ **The two are not mutually exclusive. Anyway, eventually she DID cry, our seal broke, and our wrath, undiminished despite spending a decade in slumber, burst forth and burned the world to cinders,**_ the demon continued.

"How did it happen?" Blaze asked.

The demon shrugged. _**I don't know, really. We weren't really paying too much attention at the time. You know, what with breaking free, ending the world, and all that. Plus, we didn't exactly have much of a consciousness back then- we were more a living force of nature than a rational thinking being-so we didn't really pay much attention to anything other than fulfilling the task we were created for: namely, destroying everything. And we did that very well.**_

"So I can see," Blaze said. She and the demon were now back in the ruined city where they had begun, watching the immense lava-skinned behemoth wading through the rivers of fire, demonic minions scurrying and flying through the shattered buildings and broken streets. "But given that we aren't like that anymore, I'm assuming something changed."

The demon nodded. _**Something did. It took a long time- decades, more than a hundred years, really- but eventually we developed a mind. Well, something like a mind, anyway. Not like the one either of us have now, sort of a rudimentary consciousness that would be almost unrecognizable to most people, but it was still more than we had before. We became aware that we were not the only thing in the world. Or rather, the only entity. All of a sudden, we realized that all the screaming, helpless, dying little things we had been indiscriminately killing over the last several decades were… Well, alive. Alive in a way that we were not. That they had thoughts and feelings and, well, lives separate from our own, they were not merely… Things that only existed to be destroyed.**_

"And we stopped killing them?" Blaze asked.

 _ **Oh no, we still did**_ , the demon corrected her, causing her to grimace. _**But we became aware that they… Well, that they were different from us. Our minions, as you're well aware, are basically extensions of our own will. They don't really have thoughts and feelings of their own; they're just expressing what we feel. The mortals, however… They didn't work like that. They had their own thoughts and feelings. They were not like us. And so, even as we killed them indiscriminately, we became… Curious. What were they, exactly? Why were they different from us? And why was it that no matter how many of them we killed, no matter how many times we destroyed them, some of them kept clinging to life, struggling to rebuild, and even attempting to fight back against us? They always failed, of course, but the fact that they still tried, that they did not merely give up and let themselves be erased from the world, confused and intrigued us. We wanted to know more. We wanted to understand them. Why, I can't quite explain… Like I said, our thought processes were a lot different back then… But it was something we desired to do regardless.**_

 _ **And that, Blaze, is where you enter the picture.**_

Blaze's blood ran cold. "I'm not sure I like where this is going."

…

"Neither do I," Mighty said with a frown.

"Is what I think is about to happen about to happen?" Rouge asked anxiously.

"What? What's about to happen?" Asked a confused Knuckles.

…

The scene shifted again. There were still in the ruined city, but elsewhere. From their vantage atop a broken section of highway, they could see a pair of felines like herself picking their way through the ruins, warily looking all around them for signs of danger. Little did they know that they were being spied upon by Iblis's minions, who were being uncharacteristically stealthy and quiet.

Blaze stared at the couple for a long time. One of them was pregnant.

"No," she whispered.

…

"Oh," said Knuckles, going pale.

Rouge grimaced. "Yep. Exactly what I thought."

"Oh no…" Cream whispered, horrified.

…

 _ **After much observation, we determined that mortals had a different way of making more of themselves than we did. Instead of just spawning demons from our will, they had a much… Messier and time-consuming method of reproduction. After much deliberation, we picked a breeding pair that showed strong survival traits, and then, once the life within the female had developed enough…**_

It was night now. The couple was now huddled within the remains of a collapsed building for shelter. As the male cat sat with his back to his mate, keeping watch through the broken windows, a small ember drifted through a crack and landed on the female's swollen belly, causing her to flinch and moan. The male was at her side within seconds, but by that point, she had already settled down again, and neither of them saw that the spark of flame had sunken into her abdomen.

 _ **We put a piece of ourselves into it. And not too long afterwards, you were born.**_

The couple stared lovingly at the small lavender kitten cuddled in the exhausted but radiant female's arms, swaddled in what little cloth they could spare. Tired but happy, they smiled with joy as the kitten opened her eyes for the first time… And sneezed, which might have been adorable if it weren't for the fact that a jet of fire shut out. The new parents looked each other in alarm, clearly wondering what this meant for their daughter's future.

…

"Should I find this horrific or heartwarming?" Amy wondered aloud.

"Can't it be both?" Espio suggested.

"This is going to get a lot worse, isn't it?" Cream asked, morose.

"Yes," Blaze said with a sigh. "It is." Sonic squeezed her hand. She gave him a grateful smile. Amy fumed.

…

Blaze stared at the small family, feeling somewhat hollow inside, like the foundations she had built her life on were crumbling beneath her. "Suddenly," she said faintly. "A great many discrepancies about my memories and past begin to make sense."

 _ **From afar, I watched you grow**_ , Iblis said as a series of scenes passed before them. Young Blaze learning how to walk, hunting and catching her first prey, entertaining her parents by juggling fireballs, sleeping in between the two cats that had brought her into this world, and were the only family she knew or needed. _**As you became less like me, and more like them. As you learned what it meant to be mortal. And then, when I decided it was time, I called you back to me.**_

"Except I wouldn't come," Blaze whispered.

Before them, the young Blaze paused while following her parents down a rubble-filled boulevard, staring off into the distance, ears twitching as if she heard something. She slowly started to walk away…

And her father touched her on the shoulder, looking at her in concern. She blinked in confusion, shook her head in bewilderment, then gave him a quick smile to show him she was okay and followed him to rejoin her mother.

 _ **No. So I came to you instead.**_

The scene changed once again. The young Blaze huddled in fear next to a pair of smoldering corpses as a group of slavering monsters made of lava stalked towards her, molten rock dripping from their jaws. There was a horrific, world-rending roar, and the monsters paused as a huge shadow fell over them, and they and the kitten both looked up to see the nightmarish visage of Iblis looming over them.

"You killed my parents," Blaze whispered.

 _ **Yes**_.

…

There was a long silence. "Well," Vector said finally. "That got dark."

Abruptly, Cream burst into tears and hugged Blaze's leg. "It's all right, Cream," the cat said, stroking her ears reassuringly. "It happened a very long time ago. I'm… It's behind me now."

"No, it's not," Shadow muttered to himself. "It never is."

"It's-it's not fair!" Cream bobbed, rubbing her face into Blaze's skirt. "Why did so many horrible things have to happen to you?! You're… You're _good_ , Blaze, no matter what you say about yourself! You didn't deserve any of that!"

"Y-yeah," Amy admitted quietly to herself. "Especially not that…"

"Bad things happen to good people sometimes," Blaze said gently. "And in my case… Well, a lot of bad things."

"Bit of an understatement there," Charmy muttered.

"But what matters is not what happened, but how you let it define you," Blaze said. "You can use your pain to shape yourself into someone stronger, willing to change the world so that none will ever have to suffer as you did… Or you can let it consume you, until you want everyone to feel as miserable as you did."

Everyone automatically looked to Shadow. "Oh, come on!" He snapped angrily.

"Did you kill the bastard for that? For what she did? For everything?" Mighty asked angrily.

"No, but I did do something that made me feel pretty good at the time…" Blaze recalled.

…

Blaze punched the demon. Her molten doppelgänger's head snapped back, but otherwise she did not move. After a moment, she twisted her head back around, regarding the feline impassively. "Why?" Blaze hissed, body trembling, fists clenching and unclenching, trying to decide whether or not she wanted to burn the demon alive or rip her to pieces with her bare hands.

 _ **Because they got in the way. Because they wouldn't let me take you. Because I did not**_ **understand** _ **,**_ Iblis said quietly. _**Not like I do now.**_

After a few minutes of staring at the demon, Blaze managed to rein some of her temper back in. "And do you really? Understand, that is?" She asked, her breath still a bit husky.

 _ **I think I do**_ , Iblis said. _**Empathy is not something that comes naturally to me, but… I have learned a thing or two from you, being trapped inside of your body all these eons. Funny. In the end, despite you ruining my initial plan, I still got exactly what I wanted, more or less.**_ After a pause, the demon said, in a much quieter tone, _**I am sorry.**_

"That does not excuse it," Blaze said harshly.

 _ **I know. Even so, I am truly sorry. Regret is also something I've learned from you. After all, there are a great many things you have done which you feel bad about too, correct?**_ Iblis pointed out.

Blaze wasn't sure how to respond to that. After a moment, she asked, "Why did you not absorb me back into yourself then and there?"

Before them, the great demon lowered one of its molten limbs, extending a hand to the young Blaze. The kitten stared it for a moment, uncomprehending…

And then, with a snarl of fury, she hurled a fireball at Iblis's face. The Biters recoiled in alarm and disbelief. Iblis, some of the stony armor covering its head cracked from the blow, stared at her in confusion, a look of what could almost be called bewilderment on its melted face. After a long moment, it turned and lurched away, off into the distance. The Biters exchanged puzzled looks, and then snarled at Blaze to save face before dashing off after their master. Blaze, the strength draining out of her, collapsed to her knees, shaking, crying, wondering what the heck just happened… And what she was supposed to do with herself now.

 _ **You refused to,**_ Iblis said.

Blaze blinked in confusion. "And that's it? You left because… Because I basically said no? Albeit a bit less polite than that?"

Iblis shrugged. _**You were not like the minions. I could not command you as I could them. You had a mind of your own. And if you did not wish to become one with me once again… Then I could not force you to do it. All I could do was hope that you reconsidered eventually.**_

Blaze snorted. "Fat chance of that."

 _ **We are one now, aren't we?**_ Iblis pointed out.

"… Point. How did that happen, anyway?" Blaze asked.

Iblis shrugged. _**Well, after you turned me down initially, I figured, I dunno, maybe if I gave you a little space, time to think, you'd change your mind or something like that. So I left you alone for a bit – – though I still kept a watchful eye on you, of course – – then after a while I tried again.**_ Before them, the younger Blaze angrily threw fireballs at Iblis's face. It didn't work, obviously. _**So, I left you alone for a little longer, then tried again.**_ Before them, a somewhat older Blaze angrily threw fireballs at Iblis's face. _**Still didn't work. So I left you alone for an even longer time, then tried again**_ **.** Before them, a Blaze, who didn't look much younger than her current appearance, angrily threw fireballs at Iblis's face. _**Still didn't work. By that point, I had no idea what I needed to do to convince you to become one with me again.**_

 _ **And then, one day, you sought me out. I was so excited. I thought that maybe you'd finally seen sense, and would join with me again.**_

Before them, Blaze, now looking almost exactly like she did now, threw fireballs at Iblis's face… Except this time, she wasn't alone, and was fighting alongside a group of determined, scruffy-looking individuals. _**I was, of course, wrong. Although I didn't know or understand at the time, it turned out that you'd gotten sick of me constantly showing up out of the blue for – – from your perspective – – no reason whatsoever, so banded together with a group of survivors and convinced them that by working together, you could defeat me.**_

"Did we?" Blaze asked.

 _ **No**_ , Iblis said. Before them, Blaze, surrounded by the charred and blackened corpses of her comrades, screamed in rage and sorrow, furiously hurling fireballs at Iblis as it slouched off into the distance, tears running down her face.

Blaze grimaced. "Of course not."

 _ **That wasn't your last attempt to defeat me, of course. You tried again and again, getting help from anyone you could find in increasingly frenzied and desperate attempts to kill me, all doomed to failure, and all resulting in you being the lone survivor, until eventually people stopped associating with you altogether, convinced that due to your power over fire and whatever strange connection existed between the two of us, that you were some sort of harbinger of my will, luring the unwary to their doom. Which, ironically, wasn't entirely false.**_

"… Why didn't you just kill me with the rest?" Blaze asked softly, looking at her past self, growing increasingly frustrated and angry and alone as she was turned away by everyone she asked for help.

Iblis seemed genuinely surprised by the question. _**I could never have killed you, Blaze. Not now, and certainly not then. We are one, after all. I am you, and you are me. I could not kill you anymore than I could kill any of my minions, for they are a part of me, just as you are. The very idea never occurred to me.**_

"Then why did I have no problem killing your minions or trying to kill you?" Blaze asked.

Iblis shrugged. _**The mortal part of you drowned out the part of you that was a demon, I suppose. It's not like that anymore, though. After all, would you ever kill one of your own minions now?**_

"Of course not," Blaze said immediately.

 _ **Why not?**_ Iblis asked. _**What has changed between now and then?**_

Blaze hesitated. "… I'm… Not sure…"

 _ **What has changed is that we are now one**_ , Iblis said. _**More or less.**_

Blaze frowned. "And you still haven't gotten around to explaining how that happened."

 _ **Like I said, you kept trying again and again to kill me. While you got stronger with each try, it still wasn't good enough, and eventually people stopped refusing to help you, not believing there was any point. And then, one day, you met someone who did.**_

"Who?" Blaze asked.

 _ **I don't remember**_ , Iblis confessed.

"What?!" Blaze asked incredulously. "Why not?!"

 _ **Well, can**_ **you** _ **remember?**_ Iblis asked pointedly.

"No!" Blaze paused. "Why is that, anyway?"

 _ **We're getting there. Anyway, you met someone different. Someone who still had hope that the world could be saved, and whom others believed might actually have a chance at doing it. He was more powerful than those you had allied with in the past, possessing strange and unique abilities unlike any the world had seen in quite some time.**_ Iblis scratched her head. _**What those were, I can't quite remember, but I think he was very good at throwing things. I vaguely recall him flinging very large objects in my face more than once.**_

…

Silver sneezed. "Bless you," Cream said kindly.

"Thanks," the time traveler sniffed.

…

 _ **The two of you battled me many times. Surprisingly, you actually were able to defeat me on more than one occasion… Not that it actually meant anything in the end, since I was immortal, but you were able to at least force me to lose my physical form for a time, which I can assure you is no easy feat,**_ Iblis said proudly. _**I have to admit, I was very much impressed… Even if I was still confused and frustrated that you continued to refuse to join with me for reasons I could not fathom them.**_

"I can imagine," Blaze said dryly.

 _ **In any event, despite your occasional victories, none of it really meant anything in the end… Until one day, something changed.**_

They were now standing on the edge of the crater of an active volcano. Rising from the molten lake filling the crater was Iblis, bigger and more humanoid than before, with a tail and horns growing from its head and back. The younger Blaze was standing on a ledge jutting out from the inner wall of the crater, along with… Someone Blaze couldn't quite make out, her eyes seeming to slide off its indistinct form, much like that figure she had seen during the vision of Iblis being sealed away. Blaze frowned, wondering if there might be a connection. The titanic Iblis hissed and clasped its hands together, a humongous fireball forming over its head before launching itself at the ledge. The Blaze of the past tensed, but just before the meteoric projectile could strike, the figure beside her made some sort of gesture, and the fireball was engulfed in a cyan glow. It paused, and then flew back through the air towards Iblis, smashing into the demon with a tremendous explosion. Iblis roared in pain and fury, the crater shaking from its wrath, before falling backwards, hitting the surface of the lava with a great splash of liquid rock and sinking into the molten depths.

After a moment, a pillar of fire erupted from the surface of the lava lake, swirling and roiling with barely-contained destructive power, embers raining down all over the place as it towered into the sky before collapsing on itself, forming a huge ball of fire. Blaze's companion stepped forwards, and did… Something, trying to absorb the great ball of fire, but didn't seem to be able to do so. The Blaze of the past said a few words to her companion, then stepped forward in his place, doing whatever he had been trying to do just a second ago. This time, however, it worked, streams of energy breaking off from the fireball and flowing into her, the blistering orb shrinking with every moment until all of it had been absorbed by Blaze, who was now glowing and crackling with power, streamers of fire constantly bursting out from her only to circle right back into her body.

"Did I just… Become one with you?" Blaze murmured.

 _ **That was what I thought at the time. When you absorbed me into yourself, I was so happy. I thought that you had finally come to your senses and wanted to be whole with me once again. I was, unfortunately, wrong. Remember that technique that accursed human who caused our 'birth' used to seal us within his daughter?**_

"Yes," Blaze said. Her eyes widened as the implication struck her. "We found out about it?"

 _ **Yes. I don't know how, but you learned how to imprison me within a mortal vessel, the only way to remove me from the world due to my immortality. Your companion tried to use his own body as that vessel, but couldn't, because he was unfit for that task. However, since you were part of me…**_

"I was ideal for the role," Blaze realized. "And without realizing it, I gave you EXACTLY what you wanted… To become one with me…"

 _ **Yes, though not in the way I had envisioned,**_ Iblis explained. _**Since you used the sealing technique on me, instead of the two of us truly fusing, I was just… Trapped inside of you. A passenger, unable to do anything as I was stuck inside your body. Having gone through that experience once before, I… Did not take this perceived betrayal very well.**_

"That's putting it lightly," Blaze said coldly.

Iblis glanced away. _**I'm sorry. I… Did not mean to hurt you. I just… I was so close to getting what I'd wanted for so long. It was just inches away… And even though I was so close to getting it, it was snatched away from me, eternally within spitting distance of me, and yet forever beyond my reach. You… You understand what that's like, don't you?**_

Blaze thought back to her eons of imprisonment. Of how many times she thought she'd finally gotten free, only for it to turn out to be yet another desperate fantasy to distract her from the hell she was trapped in. Of how sometimes, she still worried that this new life of hers was yet another illusion. "Yes," she said quietly. "I suppose I do." She frowned. "But… How did we get to that place, anyway? That void?"

 _ **After you sealed me within yourself, you asked your companion to use his power to banish you to another dimension, so that your world would never be troubled by me ever again**_ , Iblis explained. _**But he didn't have the spine to do it, so you took it upon yourself to do the job for him.**_

"Yes, that sounds like something I would do," Blaze said with a faint smile, watching as her younger self, after another exchange with her indistinct companion, was abruptly surrounded in a sphere of purple energy, and when it dissipated she began to fade away, floating into the air as her body became more and more transparent, particles of light flowing off of her form until there was nothing left. The dark clouds swirling above the crater parted, and sunlight shone down upon the desolate world for the first time in ages.

 _ **Thanks to your sacrifice,**_ Iblis went on. _**The world was free from me, from**_ **us** _ **, at last. All our power vanished. All our minions faded away. It seemed as if the people of the world would finally have a chance to rebuild and start anew…**_

There was a thunderclap off in the distance, and suddenly a wall of pure white stretching into infinity in every direction washed over the scene, and there was absolutely nothing left. It wasn't darkness, and it wasn't whiteness, it was just… Nothing. Nothing at all. It was incredibly unsettling. Blaze started. "What the-"

 _ **Or rather, it**_ **would've** _ **been,**_ Iblis said sourly. _**If someone hadn't done something in the past that erased our entire timeline from existence, wiping out the world and everyone in it, meaning all your hard work and suffering was for nothing. Makes the whole thing seem kind of pointless in retrospect, doesn't it?**_

"Our… Our timeline was destroyed?!" Blaze stammered, stunned. Vaguely, she recalled how she had told the leader of the order who'd imprisoned her that the world she came from didn't exist anymore. Now she knew why. "But… Why? What happened?"

 _ **I'm not really sure,**_ Iblis admitted. _**The energy behind it felt like that of Solaris, the being whom we once were. Whatever happened, though, it destroyed our entire timeline. The only reason we weren't erased from existence as well was because we were between worlds at the time. Even then, the temporal shockwave sent us flying across the multiverse, wiping out a good chunk of our memories in the process… Which is understandable, because how could we remember something that never happened to begin with? The only reason I was able to remember was because I was inside of you at the time, and because I possess more of our divine nature than you. Even then, my memory isn't perfect, as you noticed.**_ The demon glanced at her. _**Loathe though I am to admit it, by sealing me away, you may have saved us from being eliminated from time and space entirely. I suppose I should thank you for that.**_

"An entire timeline, erased, just like that…" Blaze murmured. "Such destruction is beyond anything a self-proclaimed destroyer of worlds like myself could ever be capable of…"

 _ **It is beyond my powers as well. However, back when we were Solaris, such feats would've been simplicity itself. We would've been able to eat entire timelines, and chased it down with a universe or two if we were in the mood.**_

…

"Like the Time Eater?" Rouge asked, intrigued.

"Yes, but vastly more powerful," Blaze explained.

"That thing was pretty powerful. And you're saying you used to be part of something even BETTER at eating time than that was?!" Asked an incredulous Espio.

"There's always a bigger fish out there," Shadow said sagely.

Big looked up. "Fish? Where?"

"Not a real fish, Big. You can go back to ignoring us," Amy said.

The obese cat blinked. "Okay," he said before ponderously returning his focus to the punch bowl.

Vector snapped his fingers. "Hey… So that must be why we saw that destroyed city and some of your minions during the Time Eater incident! Some fragments of your destroyed timeline must've still been floating around somewhere out in the multiverse, and the Time Eater must've gobbled 'em up or something, so they showed up in the White Space with everything else it chewed up!"

"Like us," Cream said with a shudder. Cheese squeaked and rubbed one of her ears, trying to cheer her up.

Blaze nodded. "Iblis believes that's the most likely explanation, yes."

There was a pause. "Wait… You… Still talk to that thing?!" Knuckles asked, alarmed.

"We've… Come to an understanding," Blaze said vaguely. "Which brings me back to what happened next, actually…"

…

"I guess I should be thankful neither of us can do that anymore," Blaze said with a grimace.

 _ **Such power could be useful to create the world you envision**_ , Iblis pointed out.

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely. I'm pretty damn strong already, and while I endeavor to be strong enough to make my dream a reality, there's limits to how far I want to go to make it come to pass," Blaze said firmly.

Iblis shrugged. _**It is a moot point anyway, if you cannot save yourself before you hit the ground. If you die, I will be unleashed once more, in all my terrible glory, and I shall destroy everything. What Dark Oak has become, your friends, the world… Everything. There'll be nothing left but ashes.**_

Blaze frowned. "But why?" She asked. "From what you said, you… You aren't the way used to be. That you've learned things from me."

 _ **I have,**_ Iblis agreed. _**Unfortunately, all those things I have obtained from you… Compassion, self-awareness, and understanding of what it means to be mortal, or least like one… I will only possess those things so long as the two of us are together, as long as one of us is a part of the other. You are my restraining bolt, my morality chain. If you were to die, if the part of me that is you ceases to be, then so too will I forget everything that you were, that I have become. I will once more be a mindless engine of destruction, burning everything away until nothing is left… Or unless enough survivors remained that I eventually regain enough sentience to become curious about their desperate attempts to survive and try the experiment that led to your birth once again, though I rather doubt the result will be the same this time around.**_

Blaze regarded the demon for moment. "Do you want that?"

 _ **Want what?**_ Iblis asked, confused.

"For me to be gone," Blaze said.

 _ **Of course not!**_ Iblis snapped. _**The idea of losing any part of myself, ourselves, is abhorrent!**_

"That's not what I mean," Blaze said. "I mean… Do you want to be free again? No longer held back by chains of magic and morality? To be like you once were, eternal and unstoppable?"

Iblis hesitated. _**I would be lying if I said there was a part of me that did not, deep down, crave for it. To be big once more, unbridled, no longer trapped inside your tiny meaty shell, able to do whatever I want, destroy whatever I chose. To preside over an endless broken world like the wrathful God I truly am. But…**_

"But?" Blaze prompted.

W _ **e have been together for a long time, you and I,**_ Iblis said. _**Our fates and souls intertwined. While we are not truly one, not in the way I initially intended, we are still incredibly close, closer than I suspect you ever realized. And I've learned much from you, just as I had hoped for when I made you… Again, not in the way I envisioned, but perhaps in a better way than I'd ever dreamed.**_

 _ **When we were imprisoned, I cried as you cried, hoped as you hoped, wishing for nothing more than to be free. Even the cage that was your body would have been infinitely preferable to that horrible place to which we were condemned. And once we were free… I saw through your eyes, felt as you felt, experienced as you experienced your many adventures. I raged as you raged against the many injustices and cruelties you encountered. I blazed as you blazed, rallying against those injustices and triumphing over them, burning a path to a better tomorrow, lending you the power and strength you needed to become victorious in your many battles, OUR battles, for I wanted our enemies defeated just as much as you did, not simply because they threatened my host, but because I honestly wanted them to fall for what they had done. I dreamed as you dreamed, seeing the new world, the shining future you seek to create, wishing to be a part of it just as much as you did, a world where everyone, no matter who or what they are, can find happiness and peace. Except for whales, of course.**_

 _ **...**_

"Amen to that," Sonic said. Everyone but Blaze rolled their eyes.

...

 _ **And… I've loved as you have loved. Cosmo. Honey. The dragons. All the friends and allies you've made over this long quest. I care for them, just as much as you do, even though I know they shall never know it. I do not want them to die. I do not want them to be destroyed. I do not… I do not want to become like I once was, if it means losing them. Especially if it is by my own hand that they are to be destroyed.**_

 _ **I… I do not want to be a monster again.**_

Blaze regarded the demon for a long, long time. Finally, she said, "Iblis, I do believe you have developed a heart."

 _ **Is that what it is?**_ Iblis said, wondering. _**What a wondrous and terrible thing, it is. And yet I would not wish to part with it for anything in any world.**_

Blaze nodded in agreement. After a moment, she said, "Iblis. Even if you don't want to be a monster anymore, that does not change the fact that you were one once, a long time ago. You did terrible, horrible things, not just to our world, but to me, specifically. The atrocities you inflicted are truly unforgivable…" Iblis looked away, shame flickering across her molten features. "And yet I forgive you anyway."

Iblis looked up, startled. _**You do?!**_

…

"You did?!" Everyone echoed Iblis, shocked.

…

 _ **I don't understand. Why?**_ Asked the dumbfounded Iblis.

"For number of reasons. For one thing, a sizable percentage of the horrors you inflicted on the world were my doing as well, considering that once, the two of us truly were the same being," Blaze pointed out. "The fact that the two of us split at one point does not deny me culpability in those crimes. If I were to hate you for all that, then I would have to hate myself as well… And hating oneself is never a healthy place to be."

 _ **But**_ \- Iblis started to protest.

Blaze pressed on. "In addition, hating you would be hypocritical, given that even discounting all the things that we did when we were one, my paws are far from clean of blood, either."

 _ **That's different. The things you've done have been to help people, to save lives-**_ Iblis protested.

"And that excuses it?" Blaze said sharply. "That it's all right to commit genocide or annihilate civilizations because you think it's the right thing to do?"

 _ **Of course not. But there is nothing else you could've done in those situations,**_ Iblis pointed out.

"I know. And I freely admit that, on some level, I enjoyed committing those acts. The warrior spirit in me, I suppose. But that does not mean that I'm absolved from any guilt I might feel in doing them, nor that, if there were any other way at all, I would not have taken it," Blaze said firmly. "I am _not_ like Dark Oak, nor do I ever want to be. While I'm well aware that the world I wish to create will require a high cost in blood to bring into being, I don't want to build it on a mountain of corpses or dead nations—or my _family-_ just because it's more expedient! I will change this world with my own hands, not by relying on some forbidden power which will reshape the world and everyone in it into whatever twisted reality I believe will be a utopia!"

 _ **The blood of countless nations is on my claws, though. How can you overlook that**_? Iblis demanded.

"Because…" Blaze hesitated. "Because you didn't know any better. Because destroying things was all you were made to do, and all you understood. There was no malice in your actions. You destroyed because… Well, like you said before, because that's what an earthquake or tornado or any other natural disaster does. You could not help it, no more than a typhoon can help wiping out a coastal city, or a forest fire burning down an old wood."

 _ **Natural disasters don't have minds**_ , Iblis corrected her.

"Neither did you, not at first. Not like the one you have now," Blaze countered.

 _ **But even once I developed a mind, I still destroyed and ended lives,**_ Iblis reminded her. _**And…I hurt you. I hurt you very badly.**_

"You did," Blaze admitted. "But like you said before…you didn't understand what you were doing. You did not comprehend why mortals acted the way they did, why they continued to cling to each other and struggled to rebuild no matter how many times you tore them down. Did not fathom why a little girl might not want to leave her parents, nor why they wouldn't let her go. But you wanted to…didn't you?"

 _ **Yes… I did**_ , Iblis admitted.

"As I've said several times already, destruction need not be merely an end in itself, but also a catalyst for change," Blaze repeated. "Whether you realized it or not, you were already changing, and wanted to change further. The fact that we are even talking about this is proof of just how much you've changed. In fact, I am living proof of that desire for change, because if it were not for your curiosity, your need to understand… I would not be here now, would I?"

… _**No. I suppose not**_ , Iblis admitted. _**If I had not put you inside of your mother's womb, you might never have been born. Or if you had, you probably would have died a pointless, messy death, just like so many others in the age of ruin I brought into being.**_

"Which is another reason I can forgive you," Blaze said. "Because if it were not for your actions, I would not exist."

 _ **You also would not have suffered alone for untold eons in that hell**_ , Iblis pointed out.

"True," Blaze admitted. "But I also would not have eventually made it to this world, or met all the people I now call friends. I would never have met Honey, or hatched and fostered the dragons. I would never have helped so many people. I would never have had the chance to create a new world. None of that could have happened, were it not, in some fashion or another, because of you. Everything I am, everything I've done… Is all thanks to you, Iblis. Thank you."

Iblis stared at her for a long moment in disbelief. _**Nobody has ever thanked me for anything before**_ , the demon said finally. _**Cursed my name, swore to end me for destroying their lives or their worlds… But nobody has ever, EVER thanked me for anything.**_

"Then I'm very glad to be the first," Blaze said. "And aside from that… You've said you truly regret your actions in the past, and wish to never be the cause of anything like that ever again. Would I be correct, then, in saying that, given the chance, you would undo, or at least try to make amends for everything you've done?"

 _ **With every fiber of my being,**_ Iblis said firmly.

Blaze shrugged. "Then as far as I am concerned, that is all one needs to deserve forgiveness. From me, anyway. You're not the monster you once were, Iblis. Much as part of you became me, you have become something more. Something better. You can help people, and save worlds, just like I intend to."

 _ **I cannot do any of that if you die, and I become the monster I once was**_ , Iblis said grimly.

"Then help me stop that from happening," blaze said.

 _ **What**_? Iblis asked, startled.

"You have been with me every step of this journey. I felt you within me, lending me strength when I needed it most. I ask of you to do it one more time," Blaze said, extending a hand. "I cannot do this. Not on my own. But with your help, I believe that I, no, WE, can triumph, just as we have so many times in the past. That we can stop this horror, end this war, save this nation, and create a future for my, no, OUR daughter. Will you help me, Iblis? One more time?"

Without hesitation, Iblis grasped her hand. It didn't feel at all like you might expect touching a creature made of molten rock would feel like. It was warm, but not unpleasantly so. _**This time**_ , Iblis solemnly vowed. _**And**_ **every** _ **time.**_

Blaze smiled. Energy started crackling around the two of them, fiery auras blazing up as the mindscape began to disintegrate around them. "Then let us end this. Together."

 _ **Together**_ , Iblis agreed.

Their auras exploded, the mindscape reduced to ashes…

And Blaze's eyes snapped open, awakening…in multiple senses of the term. She stared out across the land, which she had vowed would one day soon become her Kingdom (the view somewhat spoiled by her being upside down, plummeting to her death, and there not really being a lot to see due to most of the surrounding area being a barren wasteland riddled with fissures and writhing tentacles), feeling more awake, more energized, more _alive_ than ever before. Her senses, which had always been pretty sharp, were even more heightened than before, so she could make out the individual faces of every one of her friends and allies desperately fighting for their lives on the ground below, smell their sweat and blood splattering in the air, and hear their screams of rage and despair, their prayers for salvation, their rallying cries to keep on fighting just a little longer. But more than that, she could _feel_ them, on some indescribable, fundamental level; it wasn't like she could read their minds or hear their thoughts, but she still was _aware_ of them, able to feel their life force burning within them, sparks of light which were little more than embers compared to the raging fire burning within her, but no less potent or beautiful for their fragility and impermanence, each radiating so distinctly and magnificently it brought tears to her eyes. It took only a matter of moments for her to locate Honey, who was being dragged away from the battlefield by an honor guard composed of Cosmo and Damil and a number of their other most trusted allies, bolstered by demons and oddly-shaped Inves which Blaze intuited must've been some of Gaim's followers, towards a series of Helheim cracks-no doubt opened by Gaim's army as a way to get as many people off the battlefield as possible-along with a great many other soldiers who were too weakened or wounded to fight anymore, while those were still capable did everything they could to guard their retreat. The half-sphinx was desperately struggling against her saviors and defenders, crying that they couldn't leave, not yet, that her mother would be there any minute, and she'd make everything right.

Blaze smiled, her heart buoying from her daughter's faith in her, especially because Honey was not alone in this sentiment, a not inconsiderate number of the troops using her name as their battle cry, bolstering each other's confidence by claiming that this was just a minor setback, that any moment now she would show up and do something ridiculously over-the-top to show them all up and destroy that hulking abomination of a tree, and they'd love her for it. "Well," Blaze said with a savage grin. "We shouldn't disappoint our audience, then, should we, Iblis?"

 _ **Let's give them a show worthy of a legend!**_ Iblis agreed.

The fire within her, the heart of Iblis, ignited, sending her veins alight with liquid fire. Power coursed through her, raging, seething, brighter and hotter than ever before… But unlike when they were in limbo, she accepted the fire, and so was unburnt, taking it into herself and growing stronger and stronger than ever before, her eyes glowing with unchecked flames as her corona blazed out around her, bigger and brighter than ever before.

But Iblis' fire wasn't the only power she could feel growing within her. As her fire grew brighter and the ground drew closer, she could sense the hearts and feelings of her followers as they finally spotted her… And while initially they were startled to see her fall, that fear was quickly replaced by hope, for not a one of her friends and allies doubted that she had returned, and everything would be all right now, one heart believing that more fervently than any other. Their hearts resonated with her own, and as their positive emotions grew stronger, filling her with hope and love and _belief_ , the seven Sol Emeralds, which had been all but dormant ever since she removed them from the fortresses that had been drawing strength from them, at last rekindled, flying out from her and orbiting her body, spinning faster and faster as they regained their true colors and radiance, each burning with a brilliance equaling that of her own and the sun above them. Their energies melded with her own, and in a flash of light, she was transformed; her lavender fur turning pink, the tip of her tail red, her jacket becoming red while the bottom hem changed to a golden shade of yellow, the cuffs on her gloves and shoes engulfed in magenta flames, while a red aura resembling fire burned around her.

With an act of will, she arrested her descent, her new power allowing her to fly as easily as she took breath. With a furious cry, she unleashed a tremendous blast of power, a sphere of red fire exploding out from her in every direction, smashing into the tree behind her and causing it to shriek in agony and actually recoil backwards, a large section of its wriggling trunk scorched black and lifeless. She turned to face the tree as her aura receded back to swirl around her, burning hungrily around her form as she pointed dramatically at the monstrosity, the seven Emeralds continuing to rotate around her, causing her to look like nothing more than a wrathful goddess descended from on high to smite the wicked and unworthy… Which was not that far off, her own semi-divine origins notwithstanding. After all, depending on who you asked, the line between God and demon wasn't much thicker than that between freedom fighter and terrorist. "Dark Oak, or whatever you have become, hear me!" She proclaimed, the power burning within her causing her voice to echo across the barren plains to be heard by all. "This is the end of my quest, and the beginning of a new day for this kingdom you have so callously ruined! I am the Queen of Demons, Chiefest of Calamities, Archfiend of the Abyssal Planes, Flames of Disaster, Avatar of Iblis, and Destroyer of Worlds, and countless other titles besides… But the only one that matters now is that I am Burning Blaze, the future Queen of Solana! With my own hands, I will bring about a new world… _And you have no place in it!_ "

…

"Bad. Ass," Vector said approvingly.

"A well said speech," Rouge agreed.

"NOT-TO-MENTION-IT-DOESN'T-GET-AS-REPETITIVE-AS-SHADOW'S-'THIS-IS-WHO-I-AM'-SPEECHES," Omega commented.

"Oh come on, I didn't say it that much," Shadow complained.

"Yes, you did," just about everyone deadpanned. The black hedgehog scowled.

"Wait, I'm confused," Charmy spoke up. "Did you transform because you came to an accord with Iblis, or because you were using the Sol Emeralds?"

Blaze waggled her hand. "A little of column A, a little of column B. One of the reasons I couldn't tap into the power of the Emeralds before was because of the lingering subconscious discord between myself and Iblis. Once that was resolved, I was able to transform. That's also similar to why, for a long time, I was unable to transform… Because I closed my heart off to the people close to me, and only once I was willing to open that heart up again was I able to become Burning Blaze once again."

"Much like Chaos, the power of the Sol Emeralds is derived from the heart," Tails quipped.

Blaze nodded. "And with the hearts of everyone behind me, I felt as if there was NOTHING I could not do…"

"And you were able to do all this by reconciling with the demon inside of you… That's so sweet!" Cream squeaked, eyes sparkling.

"That's… One word for it, I suppose," Shadow said uncertainly.

"Weren't you able to achieve a new and more powerful form by reconciling yourself with your alien heritage?" Espio pointed out.

Shadow considered this. "… Fair enough."

"Actually, is it the same? I mean, it's not like Shadow has an actual second evil personality inside his head," Charmy said. He paused in thought. "… Is it?"

They all looked at Shadow for a moment. "Well, it would certainly explain how schizophrenic he was acting during the Black Arms invasion…" Vector murmured.

"Helping us or GUN one second, then joining forces with the aliens or Eggman the next… Sometimes multiple times in the same area…" Tails murmured in agreement.

"Shadow, is there something you want to tell us?" Sonic asked with faux gentleness.

"Fuck off, all of you," Shadow growled. He paused for a moment, and then amended, "Except for you, Cream."

"Okay!" she said cheerfully.

"Why does she get a pass?" Knuckles complained.

"Because she's adorable, and she is my great-Niece," Shadow said bluntly.

"Fair enough," the echidna relented.

"Wait a second… So Blaze, are you saying that this Iblis… Um, should I call it a guy or girl or what?" Mighty asked awkwardly.

"Iblis doesn't exactly have a gender, but I'm female, so you might as well call Iblis female as well," Blaze prompted.

"Right. So… you're saying Iblis, ah, she's still inside of you right now? And conscious?" The armadillo asked.

Blaze nodded. "Correct. She is aware of everything I am, and sometimes a bit more than that."

"Why didn't you ever mention this before?" Cream asked, looking a little hurt.

"Because I didn't think it necessary… And because I didn't want you to think I was crazy," Blaze said, looking embarrassed.

"Too late for that," Charmy muttered.

"So, um, does that mean that when you and Sonic do it, she's also there?" Mighty asked, blushing.

There was a very awkward silence. Both Blaze and Sonic turned very red. "When she and Mr. Sonic do what?" Cream asked innocently.

Without warning, Amy was holding her hammer, clutching it so tightly her fingers were forming grooves into its haft. "Yes, Mighty, when she and Mr. Sonic are doing _what_?"

"I suggest you consider the answer to that question very carefully, because if I don't like what I hear, I'm going to be very cross," Shadow said calmly. After moment, he admitted, "though possibly not as cross is Amy." The sound of the pink hedgehog's teeth grinding was very audible.

Mighty swallowed and, very carefully, said, "I immediately retract the question."

"Good answer," Shadow said, though Amy looked only marginally less tense.

"More seriously, though… Sonic, are you really okay sharing your girlfriend with this other entity inside of her? When you kiss her, or do… Other things, are you alright knowing that you are also doing it with someone else?" Rouge asked, curious. The sound of Amy's teeth grinding grew audibly louder.

Sonic rubbed the back of his head awkwardly and glanced away. Blaze, also blushing, reflexively grabbed his hand, also glancing away. The Biter made a sound which could almost be interpreted as a laugh. "We, um, we had a nice, long talk about it after the two of us decided to go steady," Sonic said awkwardly. "The short answer is… Yes, I'm okay with it, though I will admit it took a little getting used to."

"That is an understatement," Blaze muttered, her blush getting even more pronounced.

"But, you know, the two of us are both extraordinary people living extraordinary lives, so it only makes sense that our relationships would also be… Well, extraordinary," Sonic said awkwardly. "I won't deny that we haven't had our rough patches, especially where Blaze's… Third party is concerned, but… I think we've more or less found an equilibrium and a way of making it work, and, ah, that's really about as much as I feel comfortable discussing."

"Yes. Likewise," Blaze agreed, her face a brilliant crimson.

"Fair enough, I've simply curious," Rouge conceded. "If it's any consolation, a relationship such as yours is not the first I've encountered. Let's just say that back home, having a significant other who is actually more of a significant other _s_ is not unheard of."

"Oh, really? And, uh, how do those work out?" Sonic asked quickly, trying not to look that interested.

Rouge shrugged. "Some manage to work. Others don't. It depends, really, just like all relationships."

"… Yeah, I guess that makes sense," Sonic admitted, glancing briefly at Blaze, who gave him a somewhat embarrassed smile but said nothing. "And, um, do you think that you… no, never mind. That's probably not a question I need to know the answer to."

"Not from you, anyway," Blaze said, only to backpedal quickly. "I mean, not to say that we don't respect your judgment, but-"

Rouge burst into laughter. "No, no, it's fine. It's your relationship, not mine. I'm in no place to judge." She smirked. "But if it's any consolation, I think the two of you are doing just fine." The couple smiled gratefully.

Amy's teeth grinding grew even louder. "YOU-KNOW, IF-YOU-KEEP-DOING-THAT-THE-DENTIST-WILL-BE VERY-CROSS-WITH-YOU," Omega commented.

"I. Don't. Care," Amy growled through her clenched teeth.

"Perhaps we should change the subject," Tails suggested.

"Yes! Excellent idea!" Sonic said eagerly, quickly latching onto the idea.

"Um… Blaze? Is… Is Iblis listening to us right now?" Cream asked.

"Iblis is always listening, Cream. Why?" The cat asked.

"Can… Can I talk to her?" Cream asked nervously.

A look of surprise flickered across Blaze's face. "Well, certainly. She hears everything I hear, so if there's something you wish to tell her-"

"No, I mean REALLY talk to her. Not… Not use you as a go-between," Cream elaborated, looking embarrassed.

Blaze's eyes widened in surprise for a moment. "Well… That COULD be doable, but… Well… Probably not right now…" She said apologetically.

"Why not?" Cream asked, looking disappointed.

"Well…" Blaze beckoned Cream over, then leaned down and whispered into one of her long, floppy ears, "Believe it or not, Iblis is actually… Kind of shy."

Cream's eyes widened in amazement. "Really?"

Blaze nodded. "Yes, really. Remember, before becoming a part of me, most of Iblis' interaction with others involved destroying them in in great numbers and being a solitary entity. While she has certainly learned a lot about how to handle social interactivity by watching through my eyes, when it comes to actually doing it herself, she gets… Well, a bit flustered."

"Oh. I hadn't thought of that," Cream said, looking astounded.

"I certainly would never have expected an almighty demon god to have some sort of crippling social anxiety issues," Shadow commented.

"I wonder if that's more common than we think," Espio wondered.

"You have no idea," Rouge grumbled.

"If you still want to talk to her later, we can arrange something one-on-one," Blaze offered.

Cream nodded. "Okay, that sounds good. But until then…" Without warning, she hugged Blaze.

"Oh? What brings this on?" Blaze asked, bemused.

"Oh, it isn't for you…er, not to say that I don't like hugging you, but this is actually for Iblis," Cream explained, blushing.

Blaze's eyebrows rose. "For Iblis?"

Cream nodded energetically. "Uh-huh! From what you said about her backstory, it doesn't sound like she's ever really gotten much in the way of hugs before she became a part of you, and I bet she didn't get many of those afterwards, either! I just want to let her know that whatever awful things she did in the past, I'm glad she's not like that anymore, and that the two of you were able to reconcile, and that she gets to live happily ever after inside of your head and understand what it means to be a real person and have feelings and stuff instead of being a monster or erased from existence, and I'd be happy to be her friend, if she'll let me!"

Blaze had to blink back tears, and she wasn't the only one. "… That is very much appreciated, Cream. Thank you, from both of us." She crouched down and hugged Cream back.

"Is that from Iblis, or from you?" The little rabbit asked.

"Can't it be both?" Blaze sniffed, smiling through her tears.

Shadow started sniffling and tearing up. "I have such a wonderful great-niece," he said, lip trembling.

"I-THOUGHT-YOU-FOUND-HER-BOUNDLESS-OPTIMISM-AND-CHEER-INCREDIBLY-ANNOYING," Omega commented.

"That was before I knew she was family!" The black hedgehog snapped.

Silver coughed. "Sorry to interrupt, but weren't we in the middle of something?"

"Oh yeah, Blaze was about to beat…uh…the heck should we call this thing, anyway?" Knuckles asked.

"I thought it was called the Final Mova," Cream recalled.

"Yeah, but that was the first form. Since it changed, shouldn't it have a different name now?" Knuckles pointed out.

"While that isn't always the case, he does have a point," Tails admitted.

"Well, maybe we should call it the True Final Mova?" Mighty suggested, not noticing Sonic, Blaze, and Tails wince.

"That's as good a name as any," Rouge agreed.

"Right… Anyway…" Blaze said, quickly changing the subject.

…

From the cheers of the Army below, and the power surge from the Emeralds, she guessed that was the right thing to say. The giant tree monster, however, didn't seem to find her speech nearly as inspiring, and immediately tried to kill her. Branches ripped out of the central mass and tried to knock her out of the sky. Thorny tendrils erupted all over the place, flailing wildly. Vines ending in toothed mouths surged forwards, trying to snatch her up in their fanged jaws. Deceptively beautiful flowers blossomed open and started firing seeds, thorns, and swirling razor-sharp petals at her. Swarms of winged Inves materialized from cracks in the trunk, their bloodthirsty shrieks drowned out by the buzz of their wings as they surged forward to overwhelm her.

Blaze paid little heed to any of it. Her reflexes had always been well above average- an understandable consequence of having super speed – – but with the power boost her new form gave her, the rest of the world might as well been moving in slow motion. Even the fastest of the tree's projectiles had little chance of striking her… And even if they did, they would be incinerated instantly by the shield of fire wrapped around her body. A savage grin on her face, she shot forwards, leaving a fiery trail like a comet behind her as she streaked through the air. The flailing branches she either flew over or under or around, or if they were too big to do that, she simply dashed forwards in a burst of speed with a Burning Fire Boost, slamming into the branches and shattering them in a great conflagration. Any tendril that tried to grab her was immediately set ablaze by her flaming aura, the fire consuming them in seconds and spreading out into the trunk from which they were growing. Her claws flashed through the air every time a fanged bud tried to swallow her up, slicing them to pieces, and whenever one actually closed its jaws around her, a burst of flames annihilated them instantly. The flowers she threw fireballs into the second they unfolded their petals, igniting their unspent ordinance and causing them to explode. She moved so quickly through the swarms of Inves that it was nearly impossible to keep track of her between the period when she entered a cloud of monsters and when she came out the other end, the fiends exploding spectacularly moments after she turned her back on them.

"All right, enough warming up!" She declared after a few minutes of this. "Let's see what I can _really_ do!"

Her aura blazing up around her, Blaze shot forwards in a Burning Fire Boost, slamming into the tree so hard she pierced it. It howled in anguish as she tunneled through its innards, fires spreading throughout the interior as she carved a path through its grotesque mass, ripping out the other side in a spectacular blast before looping around and shooting right back in from another angle, repeating the process at least half a dozen times in under a minute, the tree shaking and screaming with greater intensity with each new burning hole she left in her wake.

The side of the tree convulsed, and suddenly a large Lotus pod on a winding, thorny stem erupted from it, the petals unfolding to reveal the monstrous Dark Oak-like abomination that had appeared atop the tree after the destruction of the three headed monster. It shrieked in rage, its mouth opening wide and firing a laser which sliced through the air.

 _ **Ah, I was wondering when that thing would show up. Figures that it would only appear after we'd caused enough damage to force it to come out of hiding,**_ Iblis commented.

 _Looks like just one big target to me. Time to take it out!_ Blaze thought back, aura blazing up as she shot towards the Lotus.

The abomination trembled, shrieked, and then fired its laser at her. The beam was massive, easily at least twice the size of the body producing it, but Blaze dashed sideways through the air every time a beam shot towards her, sometimes missing it only by mere micrometers, but dodging it all the same. The beam came closer to striking her the nearer she got to the monster, but unfortunately for the creature, it failed to hit her before she could hit it, ramming into it with a Burning Fire Boost that caused it to explode in a spectacular conflagration, its stem blowing up segment by segment before finally ripping out a sizable chunk of the tree's trunk.

The tree shook and moaned, several of its appendages drooping, its foliage withering and wilting, hardening and petrifying into a dead mass… But most of the tree was still horribly, grotesquely alive. _It's still standing_ , Blaze noted.

 _ **Well, of course,**_ said, Iblis. _**You know as well as I do a single hit is never enough to take down something like this.**_

 _Which means we need to look for another one… Ah, there it is,_ Blaze thought, spotting another Lotus as it ripped messily from the side of the tree and opened up to reveal another Dark Oak-shaped monster. With a burst of flames, she shot towards the new horror.

When the monster spotted her, it started firing powerful laser beams much like its predecessor had. Unlike its predecessor, however, instead of stupidly staying in one place and making it easier for her to hit it, it was taking advantage of its long, flexible stem and wildly moving all over the place to make it difficult for her to get a bead on it, forcing her to constantly change her trajectory using small bursts of flame to make sure she was staying on target. It was rather tricky to do that while also avoiding getting hit by the laser beams, but in the end all its bobbing and weaving couldn't protect it from getting a Burning Fire Boost to the face, incinerating it and causing another vast portion of the tree to harden and die.

But of course, just as one hit was never enough to completely destroy something like this, neither was two. A third Lotus soon emerged from another spot on the tree, and not only was it firing lasers and moving wildly around, but its petals were constantly spinning, periodically firing rings of giant razor-sharp petals which twirled through the air before closing in on Blaze. This might have been more of a threat if they weren't made of plant matter, and thus highly combustible, and so Blaze paid them very little mind, incinerating them with bursts of her aura whenever they were about to encircle her. On the other hand, she had to expend a small amount of her concentration whenever she needed to destroy them, giving the fast-moving monster more time to try and move out of the way. Ultimately, however, the petals were no more than a minor distraction, and not enough to stop her from smashing into it with another Burning Fire Boost, destroying it and killing another big chunk of the tree.

 _ **All right, judging from standard final boss practices and how bad the tree is looking right now**_ \- Iblis began.

 _And it was fairly ugly-looking already!_ Blaze quipped.

 _ **Heh, quite. Anyway, I'd say maybe…one or more good hit should finish it,**_ Iblis said. _**Unless, of course, it has ANOTHER form after this.**_

 _I really, really hope it doesn't,_ Blaze groaned. _This has gone on long enough already!_

When the fourth and (hopefully) final Lotus emerged, it was clear the tree wasn't taking any chances this time. On top of the ubiquitous laser beams, its movement pattern was even more erratic and chaotic than before, and instead of rings of petals, it was now causing Helheim cracks to randomly zip open and closed in the air between her and it, and even her lightning-quick reflexes found themselves taxed trying to not only dodge the lasers without accidentally flying into one of the cracks, but also making sure she was still on target to hit the monster. It didn't help when occasionally the beast fired a laser into a crack, causing it to be refracted and fired at Blaze in all directions from several smaller cracks which opened all around her. Fortunately, remembering her duel with Red Pine way back at the beginning of this adventure, she started throwing fireballs into cracks whenever they opened near her, in hopes that one of them might pop out near the monster and hit it. Most of them didn't, but enough managed to make it through to stun it before it could fire more lasers, earning her a few brief seconds of reprieve that she could use to close the distance. Ultimately, despite putting up a harder fight than any of its predecessors, it was unable to stop her from reaching it, and with a grin of triumphant exultation, she surged forward to destroy it…

And was surprised when it disintegrated before she could even hit it. "What the-" she stammered, too startled to arrest her momentum before she could crash into the tree trunk. Not that she had to worry about that, because before she could because smash into it, the entire upper half of the tree abruptly split in two just before she could slam into it. She didn't have time to slow down or stop herself as she passed between the two halves, which immediately snapped closed on her, and she might've been crushed if she hadn't shot her arms out to either side to catch the two halves before they could slam shut. Flames washed out from her and into the surrounding biomass, but there was just so much of it pressing down on her, and even with her newfound strength and power she found herself struggling to survive. She ground her teeth, digging deep within herself for even more power…

And nearly lost her grip and was crushed when an unexpected voice said, "Hey Blaze. Would you believe that, funnily enough, almost the same exact thing happened the last time I fought a giant tree?"

"Gaim?!" Blaze cried, startled.

"Oh, sorry," the Rider, who was partially embedded in one of the walls nearby, roots and tendrils digging into his armor, said apologetically. "I didn't mean to frighten you."

"You didn't frighten me," Blaze lied. "What are you doing down here?" Mentally, she kicked herself for not wondering where he'd been sooner. Even though they hadn't known each other for long, he'd proven himself repeatedly to be a trustworthy ally. He deserved better than that from her.

"After the big transformation, both of us got knocked off and started falling," Gaim explained. "You probably would've been fine, but I think you got hit by one of those tendrils and got knocked for a loop. I tried to summon a bike to save you, but one of those appendages grabbed me and dragged me in here. I think it's trying to drain the Golden Fruit power inside of me to try and stave off its decay. I don't know if you've noticed, but this thing isn't exactly the most stable of life forms."

"You don't say," Blaze said dryly. "What you mean, 'its decay?'"

"Something this big and this monstrous requires a TON of energy to sustain itself," Gaim explained. "Unfortunately for it, there just isn't enough of that energy going around, especially since it soaked up so much life from the surrounding landscape in its earlier forms. Think of it like sipping water through a straw, but there's only a tiny bit of water left at the bottom of the glass. Soon there won't be even that left, and then you'll get really thirsty. And of course, you can DIE of thirst…"

"So you're saying that this thing doesn't have much time left to live," Blaze concluded.

Gaim nodded. "Yeah. In theory we could wait it out, but there's no telling how much damage it could cause or how many more people it'll kill before it eventually gives up the ghost and goes to the big lumber mill in the sky."

"Not to mention I really don't want to have to stay like this longer than I have to," Blaze said through gritted teeth, sweat rolling down her face as she struggled to keep the walls from closing in. "You can't get out?"

Gaim grunted and tried to pull himself out of the wall. The tendrils and other appendages clutching him tightened their grip on him, pulling him back. "This thing's got a pretty tight hold on me, and every time I try to power up or summon a weapon it drains more of my energy. I think I could get out if I had a little more time, but I don't think time is something either of us can afford right now."

"Agreed. You said that something like this happened the last time you fought a giant tree. How did you get out of it?" Blaze asked.

"My wizard friend and I encountered the spirits of the other 14 'Bujin' Riders my evil doppelgänger had defeated inside of the tree, and they empowered us, allowing us to break free. Then my friend summoned his Dragon familiar thing and combined with it to turn into the boot of a giant flaming clone of himself, which then kicked me – – I was in my watermelon armor form at the time – – into the tree like a soccer ball, wrecking it," Gaim recalled.

There was a pause. "I… Don't think we're going to be able to replicate that trick," Blaze said slowly.

"How do you know that? Maybe the spirits of everyone Dark Oak has slain are in the tree with us and if we call out to them, they'll give us the power to break free," Gaim suggested.

Blaze gave him a skeptical look. "You really think so?"

Gaim shrugged as much as he was capable. "It's worth a try, isn't it?"

Blaze sighed. "Well, I suppose… Ahem. Spirits of all who have fallen to Dark Oak the tyrant, hear me! If this land of Solana and its people mean anything to you, please, grant us the strength we need to save ourselves and your kin, and rid the world of this blight which has befouled your beloved country once and for all!"

They waited a moment. Nothing happened. _**I don't think anyone's listening**_ , Iblis said finally.

"Oh well. Guess it didn't work," Gaim said, not seeming too upset. "Well, I'm sure we'll think of something else. Hopefully soon…"

"Actually, I think I just might have," Blaze said, struck by sudden idea. "I believe you have the right idea, Gaim. We need to reach out to others for help. And I think I know just how to do it…"

"Oh?" Gaim asked, intrigued. "Do tell."

Blaze closed her eyes, concentrating. "The seven gems you see orbiting around me are the Sol Emeralds, the most powerful artifacts in the realm. They were able to connect me with the hearts of my friends and followers, channeling their positive emotions into me to give me the strength I need to maintain this form. I can feel them as we speak… They saw the tree close shut on me, more or less, and thanks to its size and the angle, they can't know for certain that I'm still alive. While many are still hopeful, quite a few are starting to give into despair, and if too many of them lose faith, the Emeralds will weaken, and I'll have to exert even more of my inner power to maintain this form… And might not be able to prevent myself from getting crushed for much longer. However… I don't believe that connection is necessarily one way. If I can find a way to reach out to them, let them know I'm alive and need their help, then the resulting flood of positive emotions should-"

She stiffened, gasping. "Blaze?!" Gaim asked, alarmed.

"Oh… Oh my. That's… Wow. That's way more than I expected. They must _really_ like me," Blaze said with a shudder. "Or at the very least, a few of them love me more than I could ever imagine… And the feeling is mutual. Gaim, is that armor of yours fireproof?"

"… Why do you ask?" The Rider asked cautiously.

"Because if it's not, I think this might hurt. A lot," Blaze said, gritting her teeth as her aura started blazing up around her once more, brighter than ever… And then another layer of fire formed around it, and another, and another, until she was encased in seven shells of roiling, multicolored flames, each brighter and hotter than the last, the seven Sol Emeralds spinning around her so fast they blurred together to form a shimmering rainbow ring. The tree moaned in agony as her flames licked at its innards, and even as the biomass close to her shriveled and died, more pressed in, desperately trying to crush her before it was too late.

"Oh boy. This is gonna sting," Gaim groaned, bracing himself as he realized what was coming.

With a cry that seem to transcend time and space itself, Blaze's aura exploded upwards in a shimmering pillar of rainbow fire which soared and soared into the heavens above, forming a beacon of light and hope which could be seen for miles around. That beacon only lasted for a moment, however, before abruptly collapsing back into itself and being absorbed into Blaze, the seven shells of fire condensing around her before erupting to either side of her, blasting the two halves of the tree with enough pure destructive power that it was a marvel they didn't disintegrate. Instead, they were split apart so hard that they were flung to either side, the only thing keeping them from being ripped from the rest of the trunk completely a tenuous lattice of vines and tentacles keeping them connected to the central mass. However, they were charred so completely by Blaze's fire that they were pitch-black, and bits of them were crumbling off by the second. The tree wailed piteously, trembled convulsively…and then collapsed to the ground with an earth-shaking tremor, its myriad appendages twitching a few times before lying still. What was left of the ground forces threw up a ragged cheer, elated that the terror was seemingly finally, truly at an end.

With a grunt, Blaze picked herself up, gazing around at the bottom of the crater of black glass she had transformed the upper part of the abominable tree into. "Well, that was a rush," she said, head spinning.

 _ **Not bad. A shame you didn't burn the whole thing down, but I suppose it is much as I might expect from a**_ **half** _ **-demon**_ , Iblis joked.

"Oh, hush, you," Blaze chuckled, rolling her eyes. "You were impressed and you know it."

 _ **Hmmph. Perhaps.**_

She tried to step forward, and then stumbled, barely catching herself before she could hit the ground. Dots swirled before her eyes, and the corona around her flickered, the seven Emeralds stuttering in their orbit. "Phew. That really took a lot out of me. Er, us. I think it's going to be a while before we are capable of something like that again."

 _ **Hopefully, it will be quite some time before we need to**_ , Iblis said.

Blaze snorted. "Like we're ever that lucky." She frowned, glancing around her. "Though I suppose you're right, it might've been easier if we just burn the whole thing into nothingness. What the heck are we going to do with what's left of this thing? It's too big to dispose of."

 _ **Well, the petrified wood from this thing might make for good building material. You could try converting it into a new capital city for this kingdom. And this crater could serve as the foundation for your new Palace. You'll need one, if you're going to be the Queen and all,**_ Iblis suggested.

"Hmm. That idea has merit. Center of the kingdom, elevated position, technically where the old capital used to be. Yes, I think that could work-" Blaze paused.

 _ **Blaze?**_

"Why do I feel like I'm forgetting something – – GAIM!" Blaze shouted in horror, seeing a blackened heap of armor partially fused into the slope of the crater.

 _ **Huh. Guess his armor isn't that fireproof after all.**_

"Please be alright please be alright please be alright-" Blaze muttered under her breath frantically as she channeled strength into her tired limbs, rushing over to the fallen form of her friend. "Gaim, are you alright-" she started, reaching out to touch his shoulder…

Only for his body to crumble into ash at her touch. She stared in horror at the pile of dust, the glittering golden Kiwami Lock Seed the only thing left of her ally.

 **Really** _ **not fireproof. You might want close your mouth, by the way. Don't want to swallow any of that,**_ Iblis commented.

…

Cream gasped. "Oh no! Mr. Gaim!"

"Well, that seems like a pretty painful way to go," Espio commented, face pale.

"AND-GLORIOUS," Omega said rapturously. "SUCH-BEAUTIFUL-DESTRUCTION."

"Not to mention pretty crass of Iblis!" Amy complained, disgusted. "To make an awful crack like that? Disgusting! You really are a demon!"

"I-LIKE-HER-SENSE-OF-HUMOR," Omega said.

"You would," Shadow grunted.

"Wait, so he died? Like, really died?" Charmy asked in disbelief.

"How could he do that? I thought he was a space God or something," asked the confused Knuckles.

"Well, being a God doesn't necessarily preclude you from dying," Rouge pointed out.

"Given the number of godlike beings Sonic has defeated by now, you'd think you'd know that by now," Mighty commented. Knuckles grunted.

"But still… To have survived all that, only to be taken out by your own ally… That stinks," Vector complained.

"Yes, it does," Amy sneered. "What a horrible thing to do! Sonic, how could you possibly love someone who murdered their own teammate like that?"

"Amy, didn't you once try to smash Cream's head in because you thought Sonic might be showing an interest in her instead of you?" Tails asked.

Cream blinked. "Wait, what?"

Shadow stiffened. "She. Did. WHAT?!"

"Wait, seriously? She really thought I'd be into… Amy, Cream's just a kid!" Sonic protested, revolted.

"Didn't seem to stop Tails from catching the eye of that Cosmo chick," Vector pointed out. Tails blushed and started stammering nervously.

"Ahahahahaha I have no idea what you're talking about Blaze why don't you continue your story now please?" Amy asked desperately in a single breath, eyeing the trembling Shadow anxiously.

"Very well. Anyway, I was indeed distraught at the thought that I had killed my own ally," Blaze continued. "Which is why I was very thankful that, ultimately, that turned out not to be the case…"

…

Blaze fell to her knees, staring at the glittering Seed in shock. "No," she whispered. "Nonononononono _no!_ " She pounded the ground angrily, setting up a shockwave which blew away some of the pile of ashes and jostled the Lock Seed slightly. "He was… He wasn't supposed to die… I didn't… I didn't mean to… No… What have I done?!"

 _ **What you had to**_ _,_ Iblis said, not unkindly. _**There was no other way. You gave him fair warning. It's not your fault that he wasn't powerful enough to protect himself.**_

"But if I had-" Blaze started, only for Iblis to immediately cut her off.

 _ **There was NOTHING else you could've done**_ , Iblis repeated firmly. _**If you had delayed for too much longer, you would have died, I would've been unleashed, and this world would be a burning cinder. As horrible as it sounds, the loss of one life is a small price to pay for victory.**_

"It's not a price that should've been paid," Blaze said bitterly.

 _ **Hundreds if not thousands of those who rallied to your banner have died securing you this victory. What makes this one so different**_ _?_ Iblis asked.

"Because… Because all those down below, who sacrificed themselves for me, did it because I asked them to. Because this is their home. Because they were fighting for me, for their lives, for their families. For the future I promised them I could create, but only if we worked together," Blaze said slowly. Smoldering tears started to drip from her eyes, splashing down on the pile of ashes with a hiss of steam. "But this is not Gaim's world, and these are not his people. He did not help because I asked him to, but because another intervened on my behalf. And now, because of that, his world, his friends, his family… They will never see him again. I've deprived them of a great hero. A husband. A father. A friend."

 _ **Coming here was his choice to make,**_ Iblis said gently. _**He knew the risks, yet he took them anyway. They will just have to understand that. And if they don't, and decide to go to war with us for revenge...Well, we'll have to deal with that when the time comes.**_

"I suppose we will," Blaze said resignedly. Wiping her eyes, she stood up. "I shall build him a great Memorial. To honor him, and all the others who fell this day. But first… I suppose I should return this to his family, so that they have something to remember him by." She bent down to pick up the Lock Seed…

"Hey, don't count me out just yet!"

Blaze yelped and stumbled backwards, dropping the Lock Seed. "Gaim?! You are… Alive?!"

"Well, yeah. You didn't really think I'd go out that easily, did you? I AM sort of a space God, after all," the Lock Seed, speaking in Gaim's voice, said jovially, the jewels on its surface flickering in tune with his words, the incredible golden energy Blaze could perceive permeating its form pulsing like a heartbeat.

"But… How is this possible?" Blaze asked, astonished.

 _ **Really? After everything else you've been through, you ask something like that?**_ Iblis asked in disbelief.

"Good point," Blaze admitted.

"Who are you talking to?" Gaim asked.

"Oh, there's a demonic god inside of me which is technically my progenitor, but the same time, used to be me," Blaze said. "Or rather, I used to be a part of it. We talked things out while I was falling to my death and we're friends now."

"Oh, okay," Gaim said. "Anyway, I'm all right because I backed myself up on my Kiwami Lock Seed just before you released that attack once I realized there was no way I could survive it normally. I've done it before when I've gone up against truly powerful opponents, like this one alien robot who was going around mechanizing and assimilating planets to join to some vast intergalactic collective. I'll be able to reconstitute myself eventually, though if you bring me to my wife, she'll be able to speed up the process exponentially."

"Well, that's a relief," Blaze said gratefully, picking up the Lock Seed. "And here I was, worried that I'd have to explain to her that you died!"

"Yeah, that would've been most unpleasant," Gaim agreed.

With a burst of her fiery aura, Blaze took to the air, flying away from the top of the great dead tree stump towards the rejoicing army on the broken plains below. "And once you have your body back, we can hold a great celebration, because finally, this nightmare is over-"

From behind her, there was a great groan.

Blaze stiffened, stopping in midair. "Did you hear that?" Gaim asked after a moment.

"No," Blaze quickly.

 _ **No**_ , Iblis said.

"Really? Because I could've sworn I heard-" Gaim started.

"The dead wood settling, because there is absolutely no way whatsoever that that thing could be recovering for yet ANOTHER phase in this overlong battle," Blaze snapped.

There was another, even louder groan. "That doesn't sound like wood settling," Gaim said after a moment.

Blaze grit her teeth. "Iblis, please tell me that that rising energy signature I'm detecting behind me is all the stolen power that monster absorbed preparing to burst out and return to the land, and not the beast gathering strength for one more go."

… _ **Fuck**_ , Iblis swore. Blaze cursed as well.

…

Everyone groaned. "It's still not dead?!" Amy asked in disbelief.

"Oh, come on! This is getting old! This series of never ending boss battles, while admittedly action-packed, is just getting ridiculous!" Vector complained.

"Yeah, can't this thing just die already? I'm getting bored! I want the story to end already!" Charmy complained. "It's gone on long enough as is!"

"Don't worry, we're almost done," Blaze promised.

"We'd better be, or I will get very cranky," Charmy warned her.

"None of us care," Shadow said bluntly.

"When I get cranky, I start singing," Charmy added.

Shadow's eyes widened in horror. "Oh God no! Your voice is irritating enough as is! Finish the story, Blaze! FINISH THE STORY!"

Cream frowned. "Grunkle Shadow, I don't mind Charmy's voice that much…"

"You're the only one, sweetheart," he said kindly.

"All right, all right! I'll finish the story!" Blaze promised.

Charmy smirked. "Looks like my horrible voice is good for something. After all!" He said smugly.

"YES, OTHER-THAN-CAUSING-YOUR-PARENTS-TO-ABANDON-YOU-AT-AN-AMUSEMENT-PARK," Omega commented. Charmy burst into tears.

…

With a great groan and crack, the two splintered halves of the tree's upper trunk began to move, twisting and reshaping themselves into a pair of massive gnarled wings. They began to move, up and down, up and down, faster and faster, the air it displaced strong enough to send Blaze flying, and she had to struggle to regain her balance as well as keep from dropping Gaim's Lock Seed. By the time she managed to regain control of her flight, she was just in time to see the tree slowly begin to rise into the air, carried by the movement of its massive, impossible wings, tearing up more of the ground the higher it rose as it dragged its roots with it, disrupting the broken plane even more than it already was.

Blaze stared at the ascending horror in disbelief. "That tree is flying," she said flatly.

 _ **Yes. I see it too**_ _,_ Iblis said, sounding equally stunned.

"Gaim, did that tree you keep talking about do this as well?" Blaze asked the Lock Seed.

"Ah…no. No, this is new for me too," Gaim said, sounding dazed. "And here I thought I'd seen everything after that Dr. Pac-Man thing…"

"Dr. who?" Blaze asked.

"Wrong doctor. And trust me, you wouldn't understand, even if I told you," Gaim said.

…

"DOCTOR Pac-Man?" Said a confused Amy. "I knew that there was a Ms. Pac-Man, but I've never heard of a Dr. Pac-Man."

"Shouldn't that be Pac-Woman?" Knuckles suggested. Amy shrugged.

"Perhaps it's a variant, like Dr. Mario?" Mighty suggested.

Sonic shuddered. "I'll kindly ask you not to mention that name again. Pills that big should NOT fit there. Trust me on this."

"Fit where?" Cream asked.

"You don't want to know," Sonic said, tight lipped.

"Well, I didn't ask. I kind of had enough on my plate at the time already," Blaze said.

…

As the flying tree hovered above them, it's great wooden wings beating incessantly, the gaping mouth on the monstrous plant's underside wriggled and opened wider as a grotesque amalgamation of vines and flowers and other planty growths vaguely resembling the upper half of Dark Oak's body forced its way through, claws digging into the tree's underside as it glared down at the insignificant lifeforms beneath it with a baleful gaze. It opened its jaws and shrieked, its cry echoing to the furthest corners of Solana and striking fear in the hearts of all who heard it.

…

"So… What should we call this form, then?" Vector wondered. "Since we already used True Final Mova?"

"Very Definitely For Real This Time Absolutely Totally 100% Really Really Really Final Mova, Honest?" Charmy suggested.

"That's a bit of a mouthful," Shadow commented.

"I've heard longer," Rouge said with a shrug.

"I think it's very nice," Cream said, causing Charmy to blush.

"Very Definitely For Real This Time Absolutely Totally 100% Really Really Really Final Mova, Honest it is, then," Blaze said with a chuckle. "I'll be sure to have that name formally amended once I get home."

…

The monstrosity opened its jaws, lines of energy running up the underside of the tree and converging on the horror as a massive sphere of destructive power began to form in its mouth, swiftly growing by the second.

 _ **There's enough energy in that ball to destroy the entire kingdom once it reaches full strength**_ **,** Iblis noted.

Blaze sighed in exasperation. "Of course there is." She growled. "I am getting so tired of this… This had better damn well be the last stage!"

"Given how absurdly resilient this thing has been, I think the only way to finish it for real is to destroy every piece of it completely, so there's nothing left to regenerate from," Gaim suggested. "Do you think you can do something like that? Whatever you did to destroy the Golden Fruit they were growing might work…"

Blaze considered this for a moment but then shook her head. "I don't think that would be a good idea. While I've regained enough energy to use that attack again, the amount of pure Destructive power necessary to destroy something that big runs the risk of going wild and destroying what's left of the kingdom. It's going to take something else to-" She paused, an idea striking her. "Gaim, how is it you said that you and your wizard friend destroyed the last giant evil tree you fought?"

"Uh, he combined with his Dragon familiar to form the foot of a giant flaming projection of himself and kicked me in my watermelon armor form into it?" Gaim recalled.

A smile slowly formed on the feline's face. "I think we might be able to do something like that. Iblis, do you think we could pull off what I'm thinking of?"

 _ **I… Think we could, actually**_ , Iblis said after a moment's thought, sounding surprised. _**In retrospect, I'm astonished we didn't think of it sooner. Given your ability to summon my minions, there's no reason in theory we can't apply the same principle to do this too… Normally we wouldn't have enough power to pull it off without destroying your mortal form, but with all the power you're getting from the Sol Emeralds… Yes, I think this might work, but neither of us will be good for much for a while afterwards.**_

"With any luck, we won't NEED to be doing much for a while after this," Blaze said with a fierce grin.

"Blaze, what are you planning?" Gaim asked warily.

"In a moment, you're going to get a front row view," the cat said enigmatically. She frowned, a thought occurring to her. "That Lock Seed of yours doesn't happen to have a melting point, does it?"

"While my body can be destroyed, this thing is completely indestructible," Gaim assured her. "… I think."

 _ **That does not reassure me**_ , Iblis commented.

"Well, it'll have to do," Blaze replied. Grinning, she started channeling more energy from the Sol Emeralds and digging deep into her internal well of power, the eternal flame which was Iblis. Once again, fire coursed through her veins… And she couldn't help wincing in pain, noting that her body, overtaxed already from handling so much power for so long, was only able to continue doing so under great protest. _Once this is all over, I'm going to need to take a very long nap_ , she thought to herself. _Just a little longer… Just a little longer, and then I can rest._

 _ **Are you sure you're going to even have the chance to do that?**_ Iblis questioned. _**After all, you ARE going to become Queen once this is over. You have an entire country to rebuild. That sort of thing isn't very conducive to sleep.**_

 _Then I'll take lots of little naps whenever I have the chance,_ she snapped _. Or possibly learn how to sleep with my eyes open. That sounds like it would be a very useful skill._

…

"Nice callback," Rouge quipped.

"Isn't it more of a call forward?" Tails wondered.

The bat shrugged. "Semantics."

…

With a cry, her aura ignited once more, and she shot upwards towards the abomination, which had now accumulated enough power to create an energy ball half again as big as its body. As she streaked upwards, everyone left on the ground, seeing her racing towards the horror rising above them, once again felt hope, and that hope, turned into power by the Sol Emeralds, gave her even more strength, even as it caused her already tired muscles to feel like they were on fire, and not the kind of fire she was fine with, either. _Just a little longer,_ she thought to her tired body in apology. _Just a bit more, and then we can rest…_

Out loud, she shouted, "Come forth… IBLIS!"

Within her, Iblis _erupted_ …

And so did the great chasm gaping beneath the monstrous tree, as, with a tumultuous quake, great gouts of fire and lava burst forth and shot skywards, scorching the underside of the grotesque plant and causing it to tremble and recoil in instinctive pain in terror, shrieking as the flames scorched its underbelly. But the flames were just the harbinger of what was to come, as, with a world-splitting roar, what looked like an absolutely gargantuan one of Blaze's minions clawed its way out of the pit… But this was no mere minion, for it was none other than _Iblis_ itself!

…

"Wait, _WHAT_?!" Quite a few people shouted.

"HOLY-SHIT-QUOTIENTS-ARE-OFF-THE-SCALE," Omega beeped.

"Why don't you get a bigger scale?" Knuckles asked.

"… THAT-IS-ALMOST-A-GOOD-QUESTION," Omega admitted.

"Well, that's certainly unexpected," Rouge commented, impressed.

"So cool!" Charmy gushed.

"Wait, but I thought you couldn't let Iblis out without it running wild and destroying everything. Or something," said the confused Mighty.

"That's because I DIDN'T let Iblis out," Blaze explained. "Using the same basic principles I used to summon my minions, I was able to create an empty body which Iblis was able to control remotely from inside of me."

"Oh," the armadillo said.

"Really REALLY cool!" Charmy squealed.

"Wait, how come you haven't done anything like that before?" Amy asked accusingly.

"Because it takes a LOT out of me, and because we haven't really run into anything I've considered dire enough to require me to use that technique," Blaze explained. "Much like my quantum destruction ball, I consider it a weapon of last resort."

"Reasonable," Espio commented.

…

"Okay, that's pretty cool," Gaim admitted, somehow able to look down and see the monstrous world-ending fire demon rising up beneath them, despite the fact that he didn't actually have eyes at the moment. "You, uh, sure you've got good handle on that thing?"

"I will so long as I don't get distracted," Blaze said through gritted teeth, struggling with every fiber of her being to continue generating the power necessary to sustain the massive construct underneath her.

"Right. Shutting up," Gaim said quickly.

Iblis rose out of the pit, growing larger and larger as she fed more power into it, until it was at least twice again as big as it had been when it had faced her and her forgotten companion for the last time. It reached up with one massive claw and closed its fist around her, flames licking between its digits as it squeezed tightly, infusing her with even more energy.

As everyone looked on it in disbelief and wonder, the horror above let out a screech of fury, with more than a little hint of terror and desperation behind it, and fired the massive ball of energy it had been forming down at Iblis, intending to wipe out the fire demon and everything else for miles around it. As the huge sphere of raw destructive power drew near, the light from the orb bathing everything in a sickly green glow, Iblis glanced up at the approaching projectile…

And grinned.

 _ **Fool**_ , a voice which sounded like Blaze's mixed with something else, something deeper and darker and ancient beyond reckoning boomed in the minds of all present on the battlefield. _**Do you think you can destroy the destroyer?**_ Iblis drew back its fist. _**Allow me to show you what true destruction REALLY is.**_

Just before it could get hit by the energy ball, now so massive it was at least twice as big as it was, Iblis threw a punch at the sphere using the same hand it was clutching Blaze in.… And, incredibly, stopped the ball in its tracks. Waves of power washed off the sphere from the point of impact, blasting and buffeting Iblis and tearing apart the ground around it, causing even more of the broken terrain to fall into the chasm… But Iblis held strong, actually _laughing_.

 _ **Is that all?**_ Iblis taunted, slowly pushing its fist forward… And, amazingly, actually pushing the sphere _back_. _**You know nothing of what it means to destroy**_ , Iblis lectured, its voice, and that of Blaze's, echoing across the land. _**It is not simply laying waste to a kingdom, or burning down a forest, or ripping the world to pieces. It is more than ending lives or shattering hopes. Destruction is a force of nature, a tool for change, a way to clear away the old so that the world has a chance to become something new, something better, something brighter. It took me a long time to learn this lesson, longer then you can imagine… But it is one I've taken to heart, and one that you, clearly, have yet to learn.**_

Iblis's grin grew even fiercer. _**Allow me to show you. Bear witness as I end this ruined world… And burn a path for the new one!**_ With a roar, its molten body blazing up like a volcanic eruption, Iblis surged forwards…

And with a tremendous explosion, the energy ball burst, the great demon rocketing upwards through the space it had vacated, aiming its fist right for the grotesque creature dangling from the underside of the tree above it. The abomination shrieked in alarm and tried to retract itself back into the (perceived) safety of the tree, but it was too late. The destroyer was upon it. At the last second, Iblis opened its fist, and Blaze shot forwards with a punch of her own, striking and piercing the monstrosity's eye just before Iblis's fist impacted with its grotesque face, hitting it so hard it actually _imploded,_ compacting in on itself as Iblis buried its arm up to the elbow in the tree's guts.

…

"… That is so fucking hardcore," said an awestruck Vector.

"I-JUST-HAD-AN-ORGASM," Omega said happily.

"… Too much information, Omega," said a disgusted Shadow.

"I didn't even know you could have those, since you're a robot," said a confused Knuckles.

"NEITHER-DID-I. I-JUST-HAD-ONE-ALL-THE-SAME," Omega said giddily.

Cream sighed. "Should I even bother asking what an orgasm is?" There was an uncomfortable silence. "Yeah, that's what I thought."

"I'm kind of surprised that YOU know what an orgasm is, Knux," Sonic commented.

"Why?" The echidna asked.

"Well, what with your sheltered upbringing and all… I mean, unless Tikal gave you the birds and the bees talk?" The blue hedgehog asked uncertainly.

"Well of course she did," Knuckles said, looking confused. "She taught me lots of things."

"Oh. Right," Sonic said, looking embarrassed.

There was a pause. "… Knuckles, you think Sonic is talking about ACTUAL birds and bees, aren't you?" Tails asked finally.

"Well, yeah, sure. What else could he possibly be talking about?" Asked Knuckles, now looking even more confused.

"He's talking about sex," Espio said flatly.

Knuckles blinked. "Oh. OH! Yeah, Tikal taught me about that stuff, but what does that have to do with birds and bees-"

"It isn't important," Shadow cut him off quickly.

"Um, Knuckles, when you say that Tikal taught you about sex, did she happen to give you any… Practical demonstration?" Amy asked awkwardly, immediately regretting the question.

"… Are we really talking about this?" Asked a revolted Charmy.

"Apparently," Mighty grunted.

"I still have no idea what's going on," Cream complained.

"Yeah, she and Chaos showed me how it worked a few times," Knuckles replied.

There was another, longer pause. "… I have no idea whatsoever how I'm supposed to feel about that," Vector said finally.

"Knuckles, do you mean to say that you had sex with both Tikal AND Chaos?" Sonic asked, looking revolted.

"What? Of course not! They had sex with EACH OTHER!" Knuckles cried, indignant.

Everyone sighed in relief. "Oh, good. For a minute I thought… Nevermind," the blue hedgehog said, wiping sweat from his brow.

"I mean, why would they have sex with me? They're in a relationship with each other!" Knuckles continued, looking even more baffled.

Rouge opened her mouth for a moment, hesitated, then grimaced and shuddered. "On second thought, I'm not sure I want to touch this."

"YOU-ALL-DISGUST-ME," Omega sneered.

"Wait, does that mean they had sex in front of-" Mighty began.

"Could we please get back on topic?" Silver pleaded quickly.

"Certainly," Blaze said amiably.

…

The tree shrieked and convulsed wildly, root-tendrils flailing about as explosions wracked its form. The plateau at its top bulged outwards, and then burst like a popped zit as Blaze shot out of it atop a pillar of flame, rings of multicolored fire blasting out in her wake as she broke the sound barrier multiple time. As she arced through the air, her fiery contrail forming a sort of rainbow of flame behind her, the tree, without warning, _disintegrated_ in a blizzard of cherry blossoms, the beautiful pink petals washing outwards across the wasteland. All the bystanders and fighters on the ground braced themselves as the blossoms washed over them, but much to their relief, found themselves completely unharmed as they swept past… And were instead astonished to see that the ground, which had been dry and cracked and barren moments before, was now lush and green, flowers and trees completely devoid of the taint of Helheim sprouting all over the place and releasing motes of light which danced through the air and increased the feeling of enchantment and wonder which settled into all that found themselves surrounded by this newfound splendor.

As the storm of cherry blossoms continued spreading outwards, healing the landscape and restoring life to the dying country, the soldiers threw down their weapons and started cheering and dancing in celebration, realizing that at long last, the long nightmare was over. The great fiery Iblis looked down at their rejoicing in awe before fading away, a look of what could only be described as _contentment_ on its monstrous visage. _**Who would have imagined**_ , it thought before disappearing completely, **t** _ **hat destruction could be so beautiful, or so welcome…**_

On the ground, Cosmo, now sporting an eyepatch over the hole where her eye had once been, eagerly whipped off her boots and literally planted her feet in the ground, shivering in ecstasy as little roots dug into the ground and began to sample its nutrients. Most of the other Seedrian soldiers were doing the same. "The land… It feels so rich, so whole, so alive! I don't think it ever felt this good, not even before my father's descent into madness!"

"It seems that your friend – – with a little help from my husband, of course – – has managed to achieve a miracle, and brought this land back from the brink of destruction," a beautiful golden-furred tigress in a white dress standing beside her, Gaim's wife Mai, commented. "But then again, it's only to be expected from heroes of her caliber. She would make a fine Kamen Rider."

"Well, of course she would," Honey said with a snort, a look of pride and joy on her face. "She's my mom!"

…

"Wow… It's so pretty!" Cream gushed.

"And something about it feels oddly familiar… Why am I thinking of a white wolf with red markings all of a sudden?" Shadow murmured.

Rouge grimaced. "My kind are _not_ fond of that one, I'll tell you that much…"

"So that's it? That thing was really dead, the land was saved, the story is over?" Vector asked hopefully.

"It had better be, my painfully-short attention span can't take much more of this!" Charmy complained.

"Dark Oak was defeated forever," Blaze confirmed. "But the story isn't over just yet. There was one last bit to take care of…"

…

Blaze awoke to find herself in an oddly familiar place: lying at the bottom of the crater, staring up at the sky, utterly exhausted. Unlike the last time this had happened, however, it was clearly daylight, the seven Sol Emeralds were lying in a circle around her, and she was still clutching Gaim's Lock Seed in one hand. She lay there for a moment, allowing the sun to soak into her weary bones, her ears twitching at the sound of the wind rustling through leaves and the cheerful chirping of birds, and noise she hadn't heard much of – – if at all – – since she had started this quest.

"Did we win?" She asked wearily.

 _ **I think we did,**_ Iblis replied, sounding equally tired, with more than hint of triumph in her voice.

"That was amazing, Blaze!" Gaim spoke up from his vessel. "I think that blew what Haruto and I did out of the water! Excellent job!"

"Thank you," Blaze said. "Who is Haruto?"

"My wizard friend? The guy I fought that other giant tree with?" Gaim prompted.

"Oh, right. I don't think you mentioned his name before," Blaze recalled.

"Didn't I? My apologies," Gaim said, sounding embarrassed.

"That's fine," Blaze said, not feeling very concerned about it. She found it hard to feel concerned about much of anything right now, actually. She was just too tired. That battle had really taken a lot out of her. "We really didn't do it, didn't we?" She said, almost as an afterthought. "We defeated Dark Oak, and Eggman Nega. We saved the kingdom."

 _ **And secured your place as the Queen of Solana going forward, and maybe even ruler of the whole world, one day,**_ Iblis commented. _**Pity the big tree stump is gone, though.**_ _**Would have made for a good place to build your Palace. It'll be a bit tricky to put one right where the old one used to be, since I'm pretty sure there's still a giant hole in the ground.**_

"We'll find a place to build a new one. Eventually," Blaze said dismissively.

"Nega is still out there, you know," Gaim reminded her.

"I know. We'll deal with him, too, eventually. One thing after another," the cat said with a yawn.

"You're really tuckered out, aren't you?" The warrior chuckled, amused.

"Can you blame me, after everything I just did?" Blaze replied, faint smile gracing her lips.

"No, I suppose not," Gaim admitted. "Everyone's going to be wondering where you are, though."

"I know," Blaze admitted. "But the instant I get back, I'm not going to have even a moment to myself. It'll be hours upon hours of celebrations and people congratulating me, and after that, I'll start having to do the real work of putting this country back together and plotting my campaign to take over the world. I don't think it's too selfish to want a minute or two to myself to relax, since I probably won't have many chances to do so in the future, is it?"

"I suppose not," Gaim admitted.

"That, and I'm so exhausted I don't think I could lift a finger even if I wanted to," Blaze confessed wearily. One of her fingers twitched as she tried to enforce her will upon it, but after moment, it just fell flat. "See? Can't even move a muscle."

 _ **Let's hope you're better by the time they start getting worried and come looking for you**_ , Iblis commented.

Blaze couldn't help laughing at that. "Wouldn't be very dignified if they had to drag their new Queen back to the festivities because she's so exhausted she can't even stand, now would it?"

"Perhaps I might be of some assistance?" Offered Sagara, who was suddenly looming over her.

…

"GAH! Where did that guy come from?!" Vector demanded.

"Oh no, not this guy again…" Charmy groaned.

"I'd almost forgotten about him, actually," Knuckles commented.

"I hope we're finally going to get an explanation as to who this guy is, and what his deal is," Amy grumbled.

"Oh, we are, trust me on that," Tails assured her.

"Good, because I want to see if my suspicions are correct…" Rouge murmured.

…

 _ **Oh no, not him!**_ Iblis groaned.

"Sagara," Blaze said calmly, too tired to acknowledge the primal terror Iblis was experiencing at that moment. "I was wondering when you'd show up again."

"Hey Sagara," Gaim spoke up. "So this is the look you chose for yourself in this world? I have to say, it suits you."

"Thank you," the snake preened. "And I rather liked the forms you and your wife took as well… Oh, but what would she say if she could see you now?" He tutted, shaking his head reproachfully at the Lock Seed. "You went and got your body destroyed again! You know she hates it when that happens. Here, allow me."

He bent down and touched the seed in Blaze's hand. There was a flash of golden light, and suddenly, Gaim's body was restored, back in the armored Tiger form he had taken when she first met him. He sighed in relief and stretched out, working out some kinks in his body. "Thanks, I always feel a bit of a headache whenever I have to do it myself," Gaim said gratefully.

"Always happy to help," the serpent said cheerfully. "And now for you, Blaze." He reached into his robes and took out a familiar-looking golden fruit, which he held out to her.

"Not to be rude, but I find myself a bit disinclined to trust any free handouts you're offering, especially ones that happen to look like a certain piece of golden fruit," Blaze said wearily.

"Blaze! You wound me!" Sagara cried melodramatically, feigning hurt. "You really mean to say that you don't trust me, after everything I've done for you? After I orchestrated your release from that hellish prison plane you were trapped on, and sent Kazuraba and his family here to assist your forces when I became concerned that they wouldn't be able to hold out on their own?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Blaze said, ignoring Iblis whimpering in the back of her mind.

"Good, you're absolutely right not to trust me. I wouldn't either, in your shoes," Sagara said seriously. "However, I promise this is nothing for you to worry about. Kazuraba can vouch for me, right?"

"He's right, Blaze, it's the same sort of fruit that you had on the top of the tree," Gaim assured her. "It'll restore your energy, but that's it."

Blaze sighed. "Oh, very well. You'll have to put in my mouth, though, I don't have the strength to take it myself."

Sagara obligingly bent down and held the fruit closer to her mouth. Blaze managed to force her jaws over the side and take a bite out of its surface. The second it's sweet, life-giving juices touched her tongue, energy shot through her body, restoring vitality to her exhausted form. Able to move her limbs again, she snatched what remained of the fruit from Sagara's hand and finished it off in two bites, not caring that she consumed the stem and seeds too. "Thank you for that," she said gratefully, pulling herself up.

"Don't mention it," Sagara said breezily. "It was the least I could do. You deserve much more after everything you've gone through… And I get the feeling you'll be getting it soon enough."

"For better or for worse," Blaze agreed. "But of course, before that happens, I believe there are a few things you and I need to settle."

Sagara nodded. "Quite right. You have a few questions, I assume?"

"Indeed," Blaze said. "And for starters… Just who or what are you, anyway?"

Sagara grinned. There were a lot of teeth in his mouth, far more than most snakes had. "You mean to tell me you haven't already figured it out?"

"I have my suspicions," Blaze admitted, narrowing her eyes.

"I don't suppose your little friend gave you any hints?" Sagara joked.

"No, she's too busy gibbering in terror," Blaze said grimly. "But I don't need her to tell me what I have suspected for quite some time. Your connection to Gaim all but confirms it. You are an avatar of Helheim forest, aren't you?"

…

"Wait, what?!" cried a stunned Amy.

"Aha! I suspected as much!" Rouge crowed triumphantly.

Shadow nodded. "Yeah, kind of obvious in retrospect, isn't it?"

"It wasn't to me…" Vector muttered.

"Wait, I don't understand," said the confused Knuckles. "He's Helheim forest? But how? He's a snake, not a…forest. If he were a forest, shouldn't he look more like one of Cosmo's people?"

"…That's almost a good point," Espio admitted, surprised.

"Here's a better way of looking at it. Sagara isn't the forest per se, more like an entity created by the forest, an embodiment of its will, something that can speak for Helheim since it can't speak for itself," Tails elaborated.

"Oh, like the Lorax?" Cream inquired.

Tails paused. "… Surprisingly, that isn't a bad analogy."

"Well, except that the Lorax is short, orange, fuzzy, and relatively harmless. Sagara… Isn't," Sonic said.

"I'm fairly certain that if the Once-ler tried to chop down this forest, he'd have a much harder time of it," Shadow agreed.

"I didn't know you'd read that story, Shadow," Amy commented, surprised.

Shadow blushed, aware that he may have misspoken. "… When I was younger, the Professor read some of Seuss's stories to Maria and me. They were… Very enjoyable."

"There's no shame in admitting you liked those stories, Shadow," Sonic assured the black hedgehog. "I'm pretty sure most of us loved those books back in the day." Most of the others nodded in agreement, and Shadow relaxed somewhat.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Knuckles complained.

"Neither do I," said the confused Blaze.

" _The Lorax_ is a fable by celebrated children's author Dr. Seuss concerning the danger corporate greed poses to nature, using the literary element of personification to give life to industry as the Once-ler and the environment as The Lorax. _The Lorax_ is widely considered to be one of the author's best books because it's a story addressing economic and environmental issues without it being dull," Tails explained.

"I don't follow," said the confused echidna.

"It's a book about why it's bad to destroy the environment without being nearly as preachy and eye-rolling as most cartoons tackling the issue tend to be," Espio explained.

"Oh," Knuckles said.

"Oh, I see," Blaze said, seeming to understand. "We have a similar fable back in my world."

"Really?" Cream asked calmly eager to hear more. "What's it about?"

"A very greedy and foolish man attempts to harness the power of Helheim, gets turned into a horrible monster, and is subsequently destroyed by me," Blaze said. She considered this for a moment. "Actually, come to think of it, that tends to be how quite a lot of fables back home end. Most of them are also more or less based on true stories. I've been around a while."

…

Sagara burst into laughter and took a low bow. "Very good! You're every bit as clever as I thought you would be! Didn't I tell you she was a smart one, Kazuraba?"

Gaim rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "Yes, you did. No need to keep bringing that up."

"In any event, yes, Miss Blaze, you are absolutely correct. I am indeed an avatar of Helheim forest," Sagara told the feline.

Blaze frowned. "I had figured as much. However, that doesn't explain why you helped me and set all this into motion. Dark Oak and Eggman Nega were trying to spread your forest across this planet. Isn't that what you wanted?"

Sagara chuckled. "Blaze, how would you like it if someone were to steal a part of your power and use it to destroy a country?"

"To say I would be rather cross would be an understatement," Blaze said dryly. "However, I've more or less sworn off destroying worlds. You do it all the time."

"Yes, but that's the thing," Sagara said, suddenly serious. " _I_ destroy worlds. It is my purpose. It's what I was made to do. If a world is to be destroyed by my power, it is only because I will it. Therefore, if someone were to try and use my power to destroy a world without my permission… Well, I would not be very happy, to put it lightly."

"So it's fine when you do it, but not anyone else?" Blaze snarled.

"You're planning to conquer the world, and have no intention of letting anyone else beat you to it," Sagara countered. "Yes, I know there are lots of justifications you can make as to why the world would be better off under your rule. They may even be true. That still doesn't change the fact that that is, ultimately, what it boils down to." He shrugged. "But then again, given the sorts of things I do on a regular basis, I'm not really one to judge. In any event, it wasn't simply that they were attempting to use my power to overrun and change the world. As annoyed as that made me, I might have been willing to overlook it, had they also not tried to create their own Golden Fruit. That is a major taboo, for I am the only one who can make one of those properly. All attempts to create an artificial one in the past have led to ruin, isn't that right, Kazuraba?"

Gaim nodded, and glanced at Blaze. "The species that was invaded by Helheim before my world, the Femushinmu, tried to create their own Golden Fruit many years after they were assimilated and transformed into Overlord Inves. It gained consciousness and hastened their extinction by driving them to kill each other to try and claim its power and had to be sealed away. It got loose during the invasion of my world, and...well, that led into the whole soccer adventure I alluded to earlier."

"Well, that aside, that still doesn't explain why you brought me in," Blaze continued. "If you were so angry about what they were doing, why didn't you take care of it yourself?"

"Not my style," Sagara said dismissively. "Sure, I could've come down on them like a sack of bricks and nipped this in the bud, but where would the fun be in that?"

"You call the death and suffering of countless innocents fun?!" Blaze snapped.

"As I recall, the last time we talked, I pointed out that countless innocents suffer and die all the time," Sagara said flatly. "And you're really going to pull that card on me, given what you're planning?"

Blaze scowled. "What you mean by that?"

"You want to conquer the world. Fine. But even if you do your best to only go after the bad guys, a lot of people who have no stake in it are still going to get hurt in the process, and their only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You talk a lot about being a wildfire which will clear out the world's deadwood, about necessary destruction… And while all that might be true, you seem to have forgotten that in a forest fire, _helpless animals get burned just as easily as trees!_ " Sagara pointed out harshly. Blaze flinched at that.

"Sagara…" Gaim muttered warningly.

The snake took a deep breath and relaxed somewhat. "My apologies. I did not mean to criticize your ambition. But the fact of the matter is, if you want to avoid turning into a tyrant as bad as the one you just overthrew, you have to try not to gloss over that kind of thing, you know? Otherwise you'll just bring everything right back to where it started. There's a reason they're called 'revolutions,' after all. They have a bad habit of coming full circle."

"I… I will endeavor to remember that," Blaze murmured, shaken.

"In any event, you are wondering why I chose to do nothing directly," Sagara continued. "Aside from the fact that, like I said, it's not my style… I actually saw this as a way to kill two birds with one stone."

Blaze frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Well, as I'm sure you know, I visited this world a very, very long time ago. I made plans to come back, but not for another few thousand years, so when I saw that Dark Oak and Nega were making plans to use my power for their own ends, while I was understandably angry, I saw this as a way to check off something on my to-do list a few millennia early," Sagara explained.

"You were going to come BACK? Why?" Asked the confused cat.

"Do you know why I do what I do?" Sagara asked. "The answer ties into why, ultimately, I chose you to be my proxy in this war. Much like you, I just want to see things change. Whenever I believe a world is growing too stagnant and set in its ways, or could use a good shaking up, I pay them a visit. I introduce conflict. I provide a looming existential threat. I offer a prize for those who are worthy and strong enough to claim it. I press them and break them to make them stronger, by showing them who they really are when their back is against the wall, so that they have a chance to become something better, to evolve both as an individual and as a species. Not all of them succeed. Quite a few, such as the aforementioned Femushinmu, fall short. But others, such as Kazuraba here, pass the test, and become something truly miraculous."

"You flatter me too much, Sagara," Gaim said, abashed.

"Or not enough, methinks. Is what I do messy? Cruel? Genocidal? Perhaps," Sagara admitted with a shrug. "But much like you, Blaze, I believe destruction to be a tool for change. And as I'm sure you can also admit, change is often incredibly messy and violent and cruel. Not everyone wants the world to change, even when it is, ultimately, for their own good. And yes, ultimately, quite a lot of people who did nothing wrong will probably get caught in the crossfire – – or in your case, wildfire. But the alternative is to let things continue going on their current course, the way they always have… And while that might be okay in the short-term, it could cause even worse problems further down the line. Sometimes the world HAS to change. Sometimes, the forest HAS to be burned down. Otherwise, it will eventually rot away, and all those who would have died in the fire will die anyway in a slower, more agonizing fate. Changing the world, even if it really is for all the right reasons, always has its price. Isn't that right, Kazuraba?"

Gaim nodded solemnly. "Sagara once challenged me to destroy the rule of reality which demanded that you have to sacrifice something to get something. But, try as I might… Ultimately, I couldn't do it. I was able to save my own world, but only after the deaths of many I might, in another life, have called friends, and in the end, wound up having to give up my friends, my family, my home… Even my very HUMANITY to succeed. I got a new world, new friends, new family, incredible powers, and a wife out of the deal… But to do so, I had to say goodbye to everything I knew. It was a choice that, even to this day, still haunts me."

"If I had simply crushed Dark Oak and Nega before they got really started, or even afterwards, the war King Lucas feared would eventually have come to pass," Sagara continued. "And Solana would have lost. The greedy neighboring countries would have ripped it to shreds to claim its resources and riches, and destroyed it even further by fighting amongst themselves for whatever scraps remained. The people of this land would have suffered horribly. Yes, they suffered anyway… But I can guarantee you that if things had come to pass in this manner, there would have been no savior to unite them and offer them hope."

"So you allowed one disaster to take place, because you believed the alternative would be far worse…" Blaze murmured. "… In that other world, Honey would not have survived, would he?"

"Nor would Cosmo, or Damil, or any of the other friends you've made over your long journey," Sagara said firmly. "They would be dead. Or worse. MUCH worse."

"… I see. I'm not entirely sure I completely agree with you, but your reasoning makes sense. And… If it truly is the reason why Cosmo and Honey, and everyone else are alive to see this day, I suppose I can't argue with the results," Blaze admitted grudgingly. "But that leaves one more question: why me?"

"Much like Dark Oak, once he set the game in motion, I watched for heroes to arise, champions who could challenge the dark Lord for the Golden Fruit and bring about the change this land needed so badly," Sagara explained. "However, much to both our consternation's, no such hero emerged. So, I decided to cheat a little bit, reasoning that, since I wasn't running the show for a change, I had no need to follow my own rules. Solana is an old country, with many legends and stories of great heroes. You are not the only champion lost to time, slumbering or sealed away somewhere. However, you were the only one I felt certain could accomplish what needed to be done, to save this country and bring about the great change… Because, like me, you have the potential to reshape worlds, and the conviction that destruction can be a force for positive change."

"And so you appeared in your current guise to Cosmo, fed her some story about me, and set her in the right direction to finding and releasing me," Blaze intuited, not sure whether she should feel flattered or unnerved by Sagara's faith in her. "But how did you get the key and the spell needed to release me?"

Sagara chuckled. "Blaze, I am a very, very, _very_ old entity. I've been around a long, long time. I knew the spell necessary to transport things to that prison plane eons before the order which banished you figured it out. All the key fragments were scattered into worlds I had long since assimilated into myself. Not to mention my perception of time and reality is a bit… Different from yours. I wouldn't exactly say it was EASY, but it was certainly wasn't very difficult."

Blaze wasn't sure how to feel about that. Just how vast was Helheim's reach, anyway? "But then why did you pass the key on to Cosmo, instead of freeing me yourself?"

Sagara scoffed. "Please, Blaze, you know how these stories go! How would it look if the wandering Princess, desperate to find a great hero to save her kingdom, failed to do so and some random Schmuck did it instead? That goes against all literary convention! It simply isn't done!"

"I dunno, stories which subvert most of the typical clichés and tropes can become very popular," Gaim pointed out.

Sagara waved him off. "Maybe so, but you can't beat the classics. Besides, it made for a better story."

"And where does Gaim fit into this 'better story?'" Gaim asked, voice dripping with sarcasm. "People hate stories with deus ex machinas and characters dropping in out of the blue to save the day without any foreshadowing whatsoever."

"Fair point," Sagara admitted. "As things drew to a climax, I decided to bend a few more of my rules and allow Kazuraba to lend you a hand. Normally I wouldn't do something like this, buuuuuut… I thought it would make things more interesting. Not that I didn't think you could do this on your own, of course, but let's be fair, even you would've had a bit of trouble taking on both Dark Oak and Nega at once, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose so…" Blaze admitted reluctantly.

"And if it's any consolation, I think that your army suffered a lot fewer casualties thanks to my own lending a hand," Gaim offered.

"Thank you for that, Gaim," Blaze said gratefully.

"What, no thanks for me?" Sagara asked, feigning injury.

Blaze frowned at him. "Honestly, I'm not sure what to think about you. From what you said, you've basically been manipulating me from the very beginning, setting me up to do your dirty work and clean up a mess you could easily have resolved yourself."

"And I also freed you from an eternity of torturous solitude, gave you friends, a family, and a kingdom of your own to rule, and a chance to change the world and dye it in your image," Sagara pointed out. "You're welcome."

Blaze closed her eyes and sighed. "You have a point," she admitted. "While I'm not entirely pleased with you, or everything you've done… It would probably be rude of me to hold it against you, given how well it's turned out for me, and those I care about. However… Sagara?"

"Yes?" The snake asked with an innocent smile.

"You ever try anything like that around here again, and I will burn you and all your worlds to the ground," she said coldly.

Sagara laughed. "I'd actually be curious to see if you could really do it. If you could manage that, I will truly be impressed," he said honestly. "But don't worry, you won't be seeing me again for a very long time. Now that the battle here has been won, I have no need to stick around. I have other worlds to visit, and won't need to check in on you again for another epoch or two. I am genuinely curious to see what you will have made of the place in my absence."

 _When he comes back, I'll be sure to have an unpleasant surprise waiting_ , Blaze thought herself. While she was grudgingly grateful to Sagara for everything he'd done for her, that didn't mean she would be welcoming him with open arms the next time he stopped by. Out loud, she said, "So what happens now?"

Sagara raised an eyebrow. "Now? I go on my way. Gaim returns home with his family and followers, unless you would like them to stick around a little longer to help you rebuild."

"I'd be okay with that," Gaim spoke up.

"I suppose that would be alright," Blaze agreed.

"And you… You have a choice to make," Sagara said seriously.

Blaze frowned. "A choice?"

Sagara nodded gravely. "A very important one. Come. Follow me." He slithered up the slope of the crater. Gaim glanced back at Blaze, and then followed the snake. Puzzled, Blaze eventually shrugged her shoulders and followed suit, pausing only to pick up the seven Sol Emeralds. Wouldn't do to leave them unattended. Someone might take them while her back was turned. Nega was still out there, after all.

The sight waiting for her once they got out of the crater took Blaze's breath away. An endless carpet of green grass dotted with beautiful flowers shimmering in all the colors of the rainbow spread outwards unceasingly to the edge of the horizon. Strong, sturdy trees bearing fruit and flowers dotted the landscape, leaves swaying in a gentle breeze. Motes of light danced in the air, along with cherry blossom petals left over from the disintegration of the Doom Tree. The sun shone brilliantly down on it all, its warmth painting everything in a magnificent incandescent radiance. "It's… Beautiful…" She gasped.

 _ **And a damn sight better than the last world looked after we were through with it,**_ Iblis agreed, too awestruck to remember for a moment that she was struck speechless with terror by the presence of Sagara.

Gaim whistled. "Nice work, Blaze."

"Indeed, though I prefer things a little more… Forested," Sagara said, a somewhat sinister smirk flickering briefly crossed his face. "In any event… This is yours now, Blaze. The new Solana. You have fought for it, bled for it, reshaped it with your own claws and force of will. Everything it is now, it owes to you.

"The question is, what will you do with it?"

Blaze considered the question carefully. She doubted the answer was as simple as it looked on the face of it. "Rule it, I suppose," she said finally. "It has been entrusted into my care. Cosmo and everyone else have accepted me as the new Queen of Solana."

Sagara nodded. "And is this a position you truly desire?"

"It… Wasn't my first choice, to be honest," Blaze admitted. "But… Cosmo made a fairly good argument as to why I should be Queen, and I couldn't really find any flaw in her logic. Everyone else seems to believe that I will make a good Queen. They have faith in me. So…" She shrugged.

"Do you _want_ to be Queen, then?" Sagara pressed.

"Like I said, it wasn't what I saw myself doing when I set out on this journey," Blaze said. "I figured that after this was all over, Cosmo would be Queen, and I would… I dunno. Be her champion or something. A close friend and protector. Someone she sent out to safeguard her people, fight the good fight, keep the kingdom we fought so hard to save together… That sort of thing. I'd live in the palace with her and Damil and Honey, and maybe have a nice little cottage out in the countryside, where my family and I could just go when the hustle and bustle of the capital got too much for us… Maybe find someone who'd be willing to overlook the fact that I'm a demonic destroyer of worlds and the adopted mother of a half-Sphinx and a bunch of dragons… You know. The usual sort of thing." She smiled crookedly. "But I guess it's not in the cards, is it?"

Gaim nodded understandingly. "Becoming a space God isn't exactly what I saw myself doing when my own adventure began. I didn't really have much of an outlook towards my future. I just wanted to hang out with my friends and dance and have fun. Then I found my Driver, transformed for the first time, and killed my first Inves. Nothing was the same after that, especially after I learned that that Inves was actually what was left of my team leader and good friend. I was forced to grow up faster than I'd ever anticipated. I don't think if my younger self saw me now, he'd even recognize me."

"I doubt my younger self would either," Blaze said sadly. She glanced back at Sagara. "In any event, what I want doesn't really matter. Everyone is counting on me. They need me to be their leader, just like they needed me to be their hero. I cannot let them down. I could run, but that that would be the coward's way, and I'm no coward. And… I suppose, on some level, I believe that I would make a good Queen. I can't possibly be worse than the last King, can I?"

Sagara shrugged. "Maybe not at first… But remember, Dark Oak wasn't always Dark Oak. He was once a young and idealistic ruler, much like yourself."

"I wouldn't call myself all that idealistic," Blaze muttered.

"You want to conquer the world because you think that'll make it a better place. Seems pretty idealistic to me," Sagara pointed out.

"Fair point," Blaze admitted. "Are you saying I'm wrong to do so, then?"

Sagara shrugged. "That's not up to me to decide. The path you choose will, ultimately, be yours to decide. As are the consequences of that choice."

Blaze gave him an irritated look, and then sighed. "Look, I know what you're insinuating. I'm well aware that my intentions, no matter how noble they might start out as, can go horribly wrong, and I might turn out to be a despot just as bad as Dark Oak, or worse. I might tell myself that I'm doing it for a good cause, and my people might believe I'm doing it for a good cause, but that doesn't mean everyone else that I'm conquering will necessarily see it the same way. In spite of that, however, I'm still convinced that this is what I have to do. And not just to create some idealistic vision of the future, either."

Sagara raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Why, then?"

"Because I made a promise," Blaze said firmly. "I swore a vow to Cosmo that I would do everything in my power to protect this land and its people, of whom I have grown so fond. That vow hasn't come to an end just because I've defeated Dark Oak. Before King Lucas went bad, this country was still being threatened by the greedy, avaricious nations outside its borders. That hasn't changed. In fact, we may be in even greater danger now than before, because after everything that's happened, Solana may be especially vulnerable to invasion from a foreign power, given how much energy and lives we spent just to reclaim the nation from its last King. They will come for us, and they will keep coming for us until something is done about them. And even once they are dealt with, what about the rest of the world? Will they simply turn a blind eye to what is happening here? The actions I've taken on this day have surely not gone unnoticed by the other great powers in this world. They will view me as a threat to be taken out, or perhaps a power to be secured and used as a weapon against all others. After all, there are countless prophecies and legends foretelling that I will end this world, so I'm sure quite a lot of people, motivated by fear if nothing else, will try to take me out before I can bring about whatever apocalypse they think is coming."

Sagara smirked. "The irony, of course, is that the end you're bringing isn't the one they're thinking of. You intend to change the world, and make it into something unrecognizable from the way it was before, just like the prophecy foretold. Nowhere does it say that you're going to make the world a _worse_ place in doing so." The snake chuckled. "Prophecies are funny like that, aren't they?"

"Considering that those prophecies are what led to be spending eons in a literal hell, I'm not laughing," Blaze said flatly.

"Maybe so, but if it weren't for those same prophecies, you wouldn't be here now, in a position to change the world, now would you?" Sagara pointed out.

"I suppose so," the cat admitted grudgingly.

"So, that is your reason, then? Not simply to create some ideal, perfect utopia, but to make sure the people you care about will be safe?" Sagara pressed.

"I suppose so," Blaze confessed. "I don't think I'll ever be able to rest easy, so long as the world poses a threat to my family." She grimaced. "I'm already well aware of the lengths I can go to for the sake of love. Just ask the high elves. Or, well, don't. Because most of them are dead."

"I've certainly heard of more selfish reasons to take over the world," Gaim spoke up. "Of course, doing horrible acts in the name of love doesn't make it any less horrible."

"I know that!" Blaze snapped. "It's not like I intend to go around burning cities to the ground or building giant armies and sending them out to lay waste to the countryside or anything like that! If they're willing to play ball, they've nothing to fear from me. If, however, they pose a threat to those I care for…" She clenched her fist, which burst into flame.

Sagara nodded. "Sounds reasonable. The question, of course, is will you stay that way?"

"I will certainly try to," Blaze said. "And besides, I can rest easy knowing that I have one thing Dark Oak did not. Something that tyrants like him rarely have."

Sagara raised an eyebrow. "Oh? What is that?"

"Friends who aren't afraid to tell me to my face when they think what I'm doing is wrong," Blaze said confidently.

Sagara regarded her for a moment, and then started chuckling. "I suppose you do at that. Of course, the question now is… Will you always listen to them? Ah, but enough of this," he said, waving Blaze off before she starts interjected. "I believe we have debated this point nearly to death. You have made your choice, and seem to be aware of the pitfalls and stumbling blocks that might lie in your way to achieving your goals without losing your soul. I don't think there is anything more that needs to be said.

"I have kept you from your friends too long. They're surely worrying about you by now. But before you return to them, allow me to give you a gift or two. Think of it as a reward for everything you've done. Normally, I'd give you a Golden Fruit, but the only one I have right now is reserved for someone else, and the only one around these parts you destroyed. Not that you were wrong to do so, but since you can't have that, this pale substitute will have to do."

"What's the catch?" Blaze asked suspiciously.

"What makes you think there is one?" Sagara asked innocently.

"When is there not?" She snapped.

Sagara chuckled. "Fair enough." He snapped his fingers, and suddenly an absolutely gargantuan dimensional crack split the sky into. Blaze looked up at it in alarm, seeing nothing but endless trees laden with Helheim fruit as far as the eye could see. A wind picked up, and suddenly specks and clumps and threads started rising in the distance, falling upwards into the giant crack. "First, I will remove every last trace of Helheim from Solana, save for Gaim and his kin. You're going to have enough on your plate soon enough, you don't need Inves roaming around making things any more complicated."

Once all the Inves and Helheim plants had been removed, the crack zipped itself shut. Blaze found herself releasing a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "I'd actually forgotten there were any left. I suppose I assumed they'd all drop dead or something after I destroyed the Doom Tree."

"No such luck, I'm afraid. Don't worry, they'll be much better off in Helheim, where they belong. They won't trouble anyone there," Sagara assured her. "Well, unless anyone happens to stumble through a crack, anyway."

"I wasn't worried about them," she said flatly.

"How cruel of you, Blaze! What did those poor creatures ever do to harm you?" Sagara cried, feigning hurt. Blaze stared him blankly. He chuckled. "Okay, yeah, that's in bad taste. Fair enough."

"So, what's the catch?" Blaze asked again.

"For this? Nothing. My other gift, though…" The snake started rubbing his hands together, sparks of Golden energy crackling off of them as he started generating power. "Those other countries you're worried about are going to attack in the near future. That's a given. You have a little more time than you might think, because the Doom Tree's roots did a number on them as well, but that's only going to delay them for so long before they try and make their move. And as you are now, you aren't ready to fight them. Your armies aren't big enough, and your warriors are too tired from just completing the last campaign. You do not yet have the infrastructure in place to prepare the entire country for an invasion. Sure, given your power, you might be able to fend them off by yourself… But the cost will be incredibly high, especially since you're nowhere near full strength after that last fight, and it will be quite some time before you're anywhere near that strong again. In a word, if you got attacked now, you're basically screwed."

"I would help if I could," Gaim said apologetically. "But once I'm finished helping you rebuild, I have to leave. I was only allowed to intervene in this instance by Sagara's leave. Since your new enemies aren't using the power of Helheim, I'm forbidden to intercede on your behalf. I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do to help."

"I understand, and do not fault you for it," Blaze assured her friend. "So what are you offering, exactly?" She asked Sagara suspiciously.

"A little something to give your people a boost. Put a spark back in their spirits," Sagara said, spreading his hands and snapping fingers on both of them. The trees around them rustled, and suddenly several familiar-looking golden fruits began to sprout from their branches.

"More of those fruits…" Blaze murmured, eyeing the new growth warily.

Sagara nodded. "These fruits are just what you need to get your new nation back on its feet. Their life-giving juices will revitalize their spirits, renew their vigor, and fill them with new strength and vitality. They'll also make them healthier and stronger than ever before, significantly increase their life spans, and oh, did I mention they increase performance in bed?" He asked, waggling his eyebrows.

…

"They help people sleep better?" Cream asked naively.

There was an awkward pause. "Well…yes, they do, but that's not what he…ah…" Blaze said awkwardly.

Cream sighed. "Another thing I'm too young for?"

"Pretty much, sweetie," Shadow said apologetically.

"Say, uh, I don't suppose I could get my hands on some-" Vector said awkwardly.

"No," Blaze said bluntly.

"Figures," the crocodile grumbled.

"Wouldn't you need to actually get some in the first place to necessitate the use of them?" Espio asked dryly.

Vector flushed, and everyone who understood what the chameleon was referring to laughed. "Oh, snap!" Sonic chortled, slapping his knee.

"Good one, Espio," Mighty said grudgingly.

"WOULD-YOU-LIKE-SOME-ICE-FOR-THAT-BURN?" Omega asked.

"… Yes. Yes, I would," Vector grumbled.

"I don't get it," Cream complained.

"Neither do I," Knuckles added.

"I'll explain later, honey," Rouge promised. "You, not Cream, that is," she added quickly.

"Figures," the rabbit grumbled.

"I promise I'll tell you when you're older, sweetie," Shadow promised.

"How much older?" She pressed.

"… I'll have to take that up with your mother," the black hedgehog said apologetically.

"Hey, Sonic, when you and Blaze do it, do you ever need to have some fruit before-" Charmy began.

"None of your business," Sonic snapped. Amy trembled with rage.

…

"… Won't these just give my enemies an even bigger reason to invade?" Blaze asked slowly.

"That, I imagine, is the catch," Gaim said flatly, glaring at Sagara.

Sagara spread his hands, not looking even remotely apologetic. "Look, they were going to try and invade you anyway, weren't they? This doesn't really change anything on that front. If anything, it might help you out even more in the long run, since you can form alliances with other nations by trading this fruit to them to give you a way to conquer them without, you know, conquering them. And as a safety measure, they can't simply steal some seeds, try to grow them back home, and use them to bolster their own armies to use against anyone else. They'll only be able to grow here, and nowhere else in the world. Granted, that won't stop them from trying to steal them anyway, but at least it will significantly lessen the damage they might be able to cause."

"I… Suppose so," Blaze said grudgingly. "And I suppose this might at least partially mitigate the threat they might pose to us if they try to invade, since if they destroy the land too badly, they may risk cutting off the supply of fruit forever."

"There you go! You see, they're helping already!" Sagara said cheerfully.

Blaze rolled her eyes. "I wouldn't go that far…"

"On a related note, Eggman Nega managed to make off with a sizable number of this fruit when it was growing on top of the Doom Tree," Sagara said, changing the subject. "Even if he can't grow new ones, if he finds a way to preserve what he's already got – – and given how much he's learned about how Helheim works, I wouldn't put it past him – – on top of any new fruit he manages to steal from you in the future, you may find yourself continuing to deal with him for a very, very long time."

Blaze sighed. "I was afraid of that… How long are we speaking here, exactly?"

Sagara shrugged. "Hard to say, really. In theory, so long as a person keeps eating it, they can live indefinitely."

Blaze groaned. "Great. So you're saying I could find myself battling an insane megalomaniacal scientist for the rest of eternity."

"Only until you kill him," Sagara offered helpfully. "Or, well, he kills you. Whichever comes first."

…

"So THAT'S why Nega has continued to harass you over the centuries?" Knuckles asked. "Because he stole that magic fruit?"

"That is the most likely reason, yes," Blaze said with a nod. "Especially since several times in the past he has attempted to – – and regretfully, succeeded – – at stealing some fruit for himself."

"I guess that means he ISN'T the Nega from Silver's era?" Amy asked uncertainly. "I mean, if he had immortality-inducing fruit, why would he need a time machine?"

"The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive," Tails pointed out. "After all, having a Time Machine means he could skip ahead a few years whenever he wanted to, instead of having to take the slow path like everyone else. From what Blaze has said, there have been long stretches of time, lasting decades if not centuries, where she doesn't hear a peep from him, and then suddenly he bursts onto the scene with some massive scheme that nearly destroys the whole world, before going quiet again."

"Which could mean that either he spends all that time where he's absent plotting his next big scheme and setting things into motion, or jumping ahead in time to surprise me with some new plot, or possibly both: he could start preparations in one time period, then jump ahead to the next, so he doesn't have to wait forever for things to be ready, since he'll be all set to go by the time he arrived," Blaze explained.

"But if he has a Time Machine, why bother doing it like that at all? Couldn't he just travel back to the past to screw things up, then, like the one Silver deals with is trying to do now?" Shadow wondered.

Blaze shrugged. "I honestly have no idea. Even after fighting him for millennia, there's still much I don't know about Nega. He might be the same one Silver fights. He might not be. He might be a time traveler. He might just be immortal the same way most of my people are. All I know is that he is a constant thorn in my side, and one I have sworn to put an end to, if ever I get the chance."

…

Blaze frowned. "Wait… Won't this cause another problem for me, in the long run? If the fruit basically puts a stop to death from old age or sickness, and there's so much of it, even if it does something to inhibit fertility…"

"You might eventually have a population crisis in the future?" Sagara laughed in embarrassment and rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah, I suppose that's another catch. But hey, look at the bright side! At least you won't have any problem feeding them!"

Blaze glared him for a long moment, eye twitching. "… Are you completely incapable of offering any assistance that doesn't potentially backfire on the people you give it to somewhere down the line?!"

"Given how pretty much every Lock Seed he gave me back in the day made me strong enough to save my world, but also caused me to lose my humanity faster and eventually be forced to leave entirely, I'd say no," Gaim said flatly.

"In my defense, I'm more of a problem creator than a solver," Sagara muttered, glancing away. "I usually leave it to others to find a solution to the crises I create. I don't make much of a habit of trying to resolve other people's problems on my own. One of the many reasons I keep Kazuraba around, I suppose."

"I thought you kept me around because of my dance moves," Gaim joked.

Sagara chuckled. "That too."

Blaze sighed. "I suppose it's too late to ask you to take this gift back."

"Yes, not to mention it would be rather rude," Sagara pointed out.

"Fair enough," Blaze said grudgingly. She massaged her forehead, feeling a headache coming on. "Just another problem I'm going to have to deal with down the road, I suppose."

"That sort of thing comes part and parcel with the sort of power and responsibility you've been given," Gaim said apologetically. "You knew that going into this, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Blaze grumbled. "Well, I suppose I always knew that being the ruler was going to be a lot harder than just leading an army into battle. Well, I'll find a way to make this work. It's not like I'm going to be in this alone, after all. A lot of my friends are more experienced in this sort of statecraft than I am, and will be able to help me solve problems like this without mucking things up too much, I should hope."

"That's the spirit!" Sagara said cheerfully. "And on that note, I suppose I should leave before I make things any more complicated for you."

"I would appreciate that, yes," Blaze said gratefully. "Not to say that I'm not thankful for everything you've done, but…"

"No, no, I understand," Sagara said with a wry grin. "I've overstayed my welcome. There aren't really many places out there where someone like me can stay for too long without causing a problem, you know. Another reason I'm so fond of Kazuraba, I suppose. He always has a place for me as his table whenever I feel a need to visit."

"The kids always love hearing your stories," Gaim said encouragingly.

Sagara nodded, and then smiled wistfully. "You don't make many friends in the line of work, I suppose… That's something I actually envy you for, Blaze. People like us rarely get a chance to form a family, or any real meaningful relationships. Treasure the ones you have, and never let them go. If you lose them, there's no telling when or if you'll ever get a chance to make more."

Blaze stared at the snake, startled. She hadn't expected the wily snake to say something like that. _The only reason I exist is because, once upon a time, Iblis saw mortals, people different from itself, and became consumed with the need to understand them… Perhaps because, in its own way, it was lonelier than it could ever realize._

 _Could Sagara have come into being at least partly for a similar reason? It's kind of difficult for a multi-dimensional world eating forest to socialize, after all…_

"Sagara," she said suddenly, before she could have second thoughts.

The snake glanced back at her. "Hmm?"

Already sure she was going to regret this, Blaze plunged on before she could stop herself. "I am nothing if not loyal and grateful to those who freed me from my prison and gave me a chance at a new life. That doesn't just include Cosmo, but you as well. If… If you ever feel a need to just… Take a break from the world-changing business, or want a place to crash for a while and Gaim isn't free… You… You can come visit. So long as you promise not to cause too much trouble, and let us know well in advance, so we can be ready for you!"

Sagara stared at her for a long while, stunned. So did Gaim, eyes wide. "I don't… I don't think that anyone other than myself has ever made that offer to him before," the Tiger said finally, stunned.

"No, it has happened in the past," Sagara corrected him, voice full of wonder. "But… Not very often… Blaze…I...That is…" He shook his head after a moment, laughing. "I find myself at a loss for words, something that does not happen very often. Your offer is… Graciously accepted. Thank you. If ever I darken in your doorstep again, I promise to be on my best behavior, and will try not to bring gifts which could potentially destroy your world."

"Or her house?" Gaim pressed.

Sagara laughed. "Now, Gaim, you and I both know that might be asking a little too much!" He looked back at Blaze, face serious. "But really, Blaze. Thank you. This means more to me than you can ever imagine."

Blaze smiled slightly. "I might understand bit more than you think, actually."

"Ha! You just might at that," Sagara agreed. He clasped his hands together and bowed his head. "You have surprised me this day, Blaze. That doesn't happen very often. Well done." He straightened up. "But truly, it is time for me to leave. Gaim, I will stop by your world later to debrief you."

"Looking forward to it," Gaim said with an expression that said he was most definitely not.

Sagara chuckled and looked back at Blaze. "And Blaze?"

"Yes?" The cat asked.

The snake smiled. "Whatever world you're going to create is going to be magnificent. I think I'm going to look forward to seeing it."

And with that, he vanished in a swirl of leaves.

Gaim glanced at Blaze. "That was both a very kind and incredibly risky thing you did just there. You know that, right?"

Blaze nodded. "I do, yes."

"Are you sure it was the right thing to do?" He asked.

"You made the same offer to him, didn't you?" Blaze pointed out.

Gaim smiled at that. "That's true, I did."

"And do you ever regret it?" She asked.

Gaim shook his head. "No. Although he'll never admit it, I think he's actually pretty lonely. The problem with being the only one of your kind is that there's nothing else like you. You find yourself surrounded by other, 'lesser' life forms… But as 'inferior' as they might be, at least they have each other, and at the end of the day, what do you have? Do you know what that's like?"

 _ **Yes**_ , Iblis said softly.

"Oddly enough, I do," Blaze said. "That's why he takes physical form, doesn't he? Not just to communicate with us, but so that he feels less alone?"

"My wife thinks so. Sometimes I do as well," Gaim said with a shrug. "Not a lot of opportunities to socialize in his line of work."

"I don't suppose he's ever considered retiring?" Blaze asked.

"I doubt it's that simple. Out there in the multiverse are countless beings that devour entire planets, specifically focusing on civilized ones, annihilating billions of life forms in the blink of an eye… Not out of any particular malice, mind you, but because it's the only way they can sustain themselves. They might feel guilty about it from time to time, but ultimately, if the opportunity is starving to death… Well, a guy's gotta eat, after all." He spread his hands helplessly. "Spreading from world to world and twisting everything in its path is just the way Helheim operates. Its natural cycle. Can't be changed or stopped. Kind of ironic, really, that for all of Sagara's talk about inducing change in other worlds… Ultimately, he can't really change himself."

 _You changed_ , Blaze thought to the companion in her head.

 _ **Yes, but not easily**_ , Iblis pointed out. _**And Helheim is a lot larger, and far more ancient, than we were. Such things have a lot more trouble changing. After all, fire has always been more mutable than trees.**_

 _I suppose so,_ Blaze thought sadly.

…

"Wow," Vector said after a moment. "That's… Pretty heavy."

"I never thought I'd actually feel sorry for a world-ending cosmic horror," Espio commented.

"Take it from me, being the only one of your kind can suck big time sometimes," Knuckles said flatly. "I can understand why even something like Helheim might get lonely sometimes."

"But you aren't the only one of your kind," Mighty pointed out.

"I am in this dimension, discounting Tikal, who isn't really all here, anyway," Knuckles pointed out. He sighed. "It also doesn't help that pretty much all of the other echidnas I know of are either trapped somewhere else, dead, or colossal assholes. Is it any wonder that I keep hanging out with you guys, even if you can be jerks to me sometimes? You're pretty much all I've got."

The others fidgeted uncomfortably at that. "… I'm sorry, Knuckles," Sonic said finally. "I know we aren't always as good to you as we could be, but… Honestly, you really are one of my closest friends. Even if you did kick the Chaotix and one of my oldest friends off your island in an act of utter hypocrisy that caused the next several years of their lives to become the miserable shitshow it is now, and are constantly being deceived by Eggman or other villains into attacking me for no real reason."

"Thanks?" Knuckles said uncertainly.

"Honestly, Blaze, that was… Really nice of you," Amy admitted reluctantly. "Reaching out to Sagara like that."

Rouge nodded. "Yes, it's certainly not a method for dealing with a cosmic horror that even my mother has come up with. I'm impressed."

"It seems like the sort of thing Cream would do, honestly," Shadow agreed.

"That's right, I would've done the exact same thing in her place!" Cream said proudly. "I'm very pleased that you did that, Blaze!"

Blaze smiled. "Thank you, Cream. That means a lot, coming from you. It felt like the right thing to do. After all, Cosmo once reached out to me, even knowing that I was a world-ending demon, and gave me the friendship and camaraderie I had always lacked. It only felt right to offer the same to another."

"DID-YOU-EVER-SEE-HIM-AGAIN?" Omega asked.

"Not yet," Blaze said. "But I have a suite ready for him in my Palace, just in case. Never know when something like him will be stopping by, after all, even if he DID promise to give me advance warning."

"What's keeping him? It's been like, thousands of years, hasn't it?" Charmy asked.

"Immortals often see time differently from everyone else," Rouge explained. "Especially beings as far beyond lesser creatures like Helheim is."

"Relatedly, I never saw Gaim or his wife or family after they helped me finish rebuilding my country and departed for their own world as well," Blaze said sadly. "I wouldn't mind seeing them again… They also have an open invitation to come visit whenever they want, but so far, they haven't taken me up on it. I suppose it's not that surprising, really. After what we went through, my nation is a bit leery of anything that uses the power of Helheim, with the notable exception of our golden fruit."

"Isn't that a little hypocritical?" Amy asked. "Especially since Gaim and his people helped you guys out so much during the final battle?"

Blaze shrugged. "Perhaps a little. Even so, I can't really fault them for feeling that way, not after everything Dark Oak put them through. And aside from that, I've done my best to make sure that Gaim and his people will always be remembered as heroes and trustworthy allies, immortalized in story and song."

"He's featured on a few statues and stained glass windows in the capital," Sonic said helpfully. "They're pretty classy."

"Of course, Gaim had not departed just yet," Blaze went on. "Our work together wasn't finished just yet, after all…"

…

"Well, if I'm going to create a world he will look forward to seeing, I should probably get started on that as soon as possible. Shall we head back to rejoin the others?"

Gaim nodded. "Certainly. Shall I open a crack to get us there?"

Blaze thought about that for a moment, then shook her head. "No. Actually, could you summon another one of those flying motorcycles of yours?"

"Sure. How come?" Gaim asked.

"Because… I would like a little time to see more of Solana. This land is mine now, both by Royal gift and right of conquest. I want to see what I've fought so hard for, this nation which I have reshaped and reforged with my own two hands. I want to see what I will spend the rest of my life living and fighting and conquering for. I want to see… This place that is now my home," Blaze said softly, staring off into the distance.

Gaim regarded her for a moment, before nodding in acquiescence. "A sentiment I can understand. After Mai and I finished making our new world, we spent a while just exploring it, and seeing what we had made before really settling down to the work of living in it, and ruling it. And I have to confess, I too am curious to see more of this new land you have brought into being."

He tossed out another Lock Seed, and it unfolded into another flying bike. "Just how many of those things have we gone through by now?" Blaze wondered.

"I've lost count, honestly," Gaim confessed. "But since they literally grow on trees back home, it's not that big a deal."

As they mounted the bike, Blaze asked, "Do you suppose we could… Take it a little slow? I want more time to see Solana. And… Well… I suppose that, since things are certainly going to get very hectic the instant we get back, I want as much time to myself as I can get, because I can guarantee I won't have any for the foreseeable future."

"I can do that," Gaim assured her. "But you know, they're probably going to get worried if we take too long."

"Then we won't take too long," Blaze said with a shrug. "Come. Let us see what I have wrought."

Gaim nodded in acquiescence, revved his engines, and took off, writing into the sunset.

…

"And that," Blaze concluded. "Is how my legend truly began."

"… Wait, it's over? It's finally over?" Vector asked after a moment, when Blaze said nothing else.

"Well, technically a lot more happened after that, but I think those stories can wait for another time. Silver asked for the story of how I became Queen, and that is exactly what I've told you," Blaze said, stroking the head of the Biter sitting next to her.

"Then… We're free! WE'RE FREE! AHAHAHAHAHA! Free at last! Free at last!" Charmy laughed madly.

Blaze glared at the bee. "Come on, it wasn't that long a story."

"It kinda was," Mighty interjected.

"Yeah, especially compared to the rest of ours," Knuckles agreed.

"It felt like we were listening to that for years!" Amy complained.

"Now, Amy, that's a gross exaggeration," Rouge scolded the hedgehog. Blaze smiled gratefully at the bat. "ONE year, maybe, but definitely not multiple." Blaze scowled at the bat.

"I-DON'T-KNOW-WHAT-YOU-ARE-ALL-TALKING-ABOUT. MY-CHRONOMETER-INDICATES-THAT-WAS-ONLY-A-FEW-HOURS, AT-MOST," Omega said.

"That was hyperbole, Omega," Shadow said.

"I-DON'T-CARE," Omega said bluntly.

"Beloved, was I really that long winded?" Blaze asked Sonic in concern.

The blue hedgehog fidgeted. "Well… Maybe a _little_ bit…"

Blaze sighed. "Oh dear. My apologies, everyone. I suppose I could have been a little more concise…"

"Well, on the plus side, at least your story was action-packed," Tails said encouragingly.

"Yeah! I was on the edge of my seat for most of it," Vector agreed.

"You aren't sitting down," said a confused Cream.

"Figure of speech, kid," the crocodile grunted.

"Oh," Cream said. "Well, I liked it as well! Now I finally know more about your REAL past! Plus, your story had a happy ending, like all good stories should!"

"I suppose it was a happy ending, at the time," Blaze agreed. "… Well, up until a few months after my coronation, when our neighboring nations finished getting their acts together and launched a huge invasion which we were only barely able to rebuke, at the cost of thousands of lives on both sides."

"Oh," Cream said, taken aback. "Well, um, at least you won-"

"And of course, not too long after that, suddenly everyone remembered that they'd hated each other for centuries and started turning on each other, goaded by a number of conservatives who didn't like how radically I was changing everything, very nearly triggering a civil war which would have torn my fledgling new nation apart and ruined everything we fought so hard to achieve, and I was only able to keep everything from crumbling by beating the shit out of everyone who stood against me, reminding them that I am the Alpha cat, and not to be trifled with," Blaze continued.

Cream's ears pressed against her skull. "That. Um. Was that really necessary?"

"It was when Rouge put down the Civil War in her kingdom," Shadow pointed out.

"THERE-WAS-SO-MUCH-DEATH-AND-BLOODSHED. I-MISS-IT-SO-MUCH. I-WANT-ANOTHER-WAR," Omega complained.

"I don't," Rouge said flatly. "I don't exactly want to have to go through all that again after all the work we put into keeping my future kingdom from collapsing the last time."

"IT-DOESN'T-HAVE-TO-BE-A-CIVIL-WAR," Omega pleaded. "WE-COULD-DECLARE-WAR-ON-SOMEBODY-ELSE. AREN'T-THERE-LOTS-OF-OTHER-REALMS-YOU-AREN'T-ON-GOOD-TERMS-WITH? REALMS-YOU-OR-YOUR-MOTHER-MIGHT-HAVE-HAD-AN-EYE-ON-FOR-QUITE-SOME-TIME?"

Rouge considered this for a moment. "Well… I'll talk to my mother about that," she said finally. "Things HAVE been getting pretty dicey in the Makai realm ever since my cousin Morrigan's old foe, Jedah, revived again to claim the throne… There have been talks about us getting involved should war break out…"

Shadow sighed. "Wonderful."

"And of course, after THAT, our neighboring kingdoms had finished licking their wounds and launched ANOTHER invasion, but by that point we had finally managed to get our shit together and not only repelled them, but broke them completely, conquering and subjugating their nations and incorporating them into our own," Blaze continued. "Of course, that spooked our NEW neighbors, and THEY declared war on us, and… Well, let's just say that I was busy for quite a while after that, and didn't really get a chance to catch my breath until I'd conquered the entire continent—which took a couple of decades-and leave it at that."

"Oh dear," Cream whimpered.

"Not exactly the happily ever after I was expecting here," Amy complained.

"There's no such thing as happily ever after's in real life," Rouge lectured the pink hedgehog. "After all, we aren't characters in a story. Our lives don't just stop once the final page has been turned and the book is closed. Life goes on. For real people, 'happy endings' are just a period of time until something else happens."

"Hence why many sequels screw over the protagonists who got a good ending at the end of the previous story," Tails lamented. "Otherwise, they'd have no reason to be in whatever new adventure the author forces upon them."

"I hate when that happens," Espio complained. "There are all sorts of stories that can be told that don't require spoiling whatever hard-earned happiness the hero won at the end of their last story."

"Not all authors are good enough to write those kinds of stories," Rouge pointed out.

"And not all audiences care about seeing the protagonist happy because they think it somehow detracts from the badass action hero they grew fond of in the previous installments," Shadow said cynically. "After all, murdering his family is always a great excuse to kick off another action-packed revenge story."

"I hate those kinds of stories," Cream confessed, surprising nobody.

"I-LOVE-THEM," Omega said.

"You would," Espio grunted.

"So, is that the end of the story?" Silver inquired.

"It's the end of THIS story," Blaze said. "Unless you wish to hear the details of how I was formally crowned Queen, or established my government, or took the steps into creating the unified, harmonious, prosperous and _safe_ society Solana is in the present day."

"No, I think that's enough for now," Silver said.

Blaze nodded. "Very well. But know that I have many other stories, should any ever wish to hear them. I've lived a long life, and had many adventures over the years, of which this was but the first. I have waged wars, conquered nations, battled gods and demons, liberated entire civilizations, broken tyrants, found love, made and lost friends, and formed a family. I have done much in my many years of existence, and I'm certain I have many more things left to do before I can finally rest, assuming I ever WILL rest." She smirked. "I still haven't finished conquering my world, after all."

"Have you given any thought to what you're going to do once you've finally done that?" Tails asked.

"Honestly, I assume I'll be too busy actually running the world and making sure it doesn't fall apart to do much else," Blaze said wearily. "Ruling an empire is a full-time job, after all, and the benefits aren't as cushy as you might expect. Even though I frequently get to take vacations, or go off on adventures like this one, and I know that I have capable and reliable people running things in my absence, I can never stop worrying about what sort of mess I'll find waiting for me when I get home." She rubbed her brow, and then smirked. "Although I did briefly entertain the idea of conquering your world – – it'd be a lot easier, since it's smaller and less well-defended – – but Beloved made me promise not to."

There was an awkward pause. Charmy laughed nervously. "You, uh, you're just kidding, right?"

"Actually, no," Sonic admitted. "When we started dating seriously, I made it clear that if we were going to have a future together, my planet was off-limits for her ambitions of conquest."

"Still think it wouldn't have been that bad…" Blaze muttered.

"Blaze! How could you?!" Cream demanded, shocked.

"I was going to give you your own continent!" Blaze said defensively.

There was a pause. "… Which one?" The rabbit asked finally.

Amy gasped. "Cream!"

"What? It's a reasonable question!" The rabbit protested, embarrassed.

"Think there's a bit more Eggman in her than she cares to admit…" Espio muttered. Charmy looked uneasy at that.

"Personally, Cream, I wouldn't accept Downunda or Subarctica," Shadow advised his great-Niece. "Both of them are far too hostile, one because of the wildlife, the other because of the climate. Personally, I would hold out for Europa. Great history, great climate, great food, and great culture. Plus, it isn't as big as some of the other continents, so in theory it should be easier to govern, though you DO have to watch out for the dozens of small nations with long histories of feuding against each other to deal with."

"I'll take that into consideration," Cream said seriously.

"… Are we seriously talking about this?!" Asked an incredulous Mighty.

"Apparently," Knuckles grunted.

"And you all think I'm crazy for hating her," Amy growled.

Rouge huffed. "Well, I should hope you keep your deal with Sonic! You can't have this world, I have prior claim to it!"

"Which I did not know before today," Blaze said apologetically. "I promise, I have no intention of taking over this world now that I know it's yours by birthright."

"Well, good," the bat said, mollified. "Because if you tried, I assure you, you would have a great and terrible war on your hands."

"Which I fully appreciate and understand. Would you be amenable to trade agreement? There's not much we can do right now, due to the dimensional divide between my world and yours, but I have hopes that someday we can rectify that to make travel between our realms that much easier. It would certainly make it easier for Beloved and I to visit each other without needing to gather all seven of our respective Emeralds every time," Blaze said in frustration. Sonic took her hand, giving her a sympathetic look.

"Since I'm not on the throne yet, you'd have to take that up with my mother, but I'll bring it up the next time I speak to her," Rouge promised the cat. "And we might be able to help on the dimensional divide, as well. We know a thing or two about traveling between realms…"

"If you could do anything to make that process easier, I would be eternally grateful," Blaze said in relief.

"And she's not the only one," Sonic said seriously.

Rouge smiled toothily. "I'll hold you to that."

"All right, if Blaze is finished with her story-" Silver interjected.

"I am," Blaze said. "Although I would be happy to tell more tales of my adventures at a later date, if any wish to hear them."

"I'd like to," Cream spoke up quickly. "It was great learning more about you, I'd love to hear more some other time!"

Blaze smiled fondly at the rabbit. "Then we shall have to set aside some time for that."

"Much like you have to set aside some time so she and Iblis can have a talk?" Shadow inquired.

Blaze hesitated. "… Yes, I suppose so."

"Then I believe it is time for us to end this," Silver continued. "There is only one more piece of information I require. One last origin I need to hear before I can go forth and stop Nega."

"Whose?" Amy asked.

Silver turned and dramatically pointed at his final target. "Big the cat!"

Big, who'd been very quietly fishing from the punch bowl this entire time and now had a pile of fish bones taller than himself sitting beside him, glanced up when he heard his name. "Hmm?"

Everyone stared. "You know, I actually forgot that he was there the whole time," Mighty admitted sheepishly.

"He's very quiet when he wants to be," Espio agreed.

"Which makes him a better ninja than you," Charmy sneered. The chameleon glared at him.

"You know, whatever we're about to learn, there's no way it's going to be as incredibly epic as the story we just heard," Vector complained.

"I don't know about that. I mean, we all figured Cream's origin story was going to be just a piece of fluff filler, but it turned out to have some shockingly major revelations about her family and connections to the rest of us," Sonic pointed out.

"Like how I'm related to her," Shadow said, fondly, putting a hand on his great-niece's shoulder and smiling at her.

"And that her mom is a mob boss!" Knuckles added.

Cream winced. "Can you please not remind me of that?"

"Oh, sorry," the echidna apologized, embarrassed. Shadow glared him.

"Sonic is right, there's a chance that this might not turn out to be a giant anticlimax after all," Tails agreed.

"I-WOULDN'T-PUT-MONEY-ON-THAT," Omega said pessimistically.

"Big, **how did you meet Froggy**?" Silver asked Big, leading into what could very well prove to be the final chapter of this anthology.

…

Holy crap. I can't believe I'm finally done!

Or that I took so long to write this chapter. I'm really, really sorry about that. There's probably like a million excuses I can make, but none of them can really make up for the fact that I've left you all hanging for over a year. (And fans of my other work hanging for even longer…)

I could also say that I didn't intend for this chapter to be so long, but as fans of my other work might know, I have a strange tendency to go wildly out of control and write ridiculously novel-length chapters which take forever to read and even longer to write. Still, I am reasonably confident that the remaining chapters of this story won't take nearly as long to create. (But don't hold me to that…)

And speaking of which, it's time to decide whose origin should go after Big's: Fang the Sniper, the Babylon Rogues, or Sticks the Badger? Remember to enclose a vote for which story you want to hear next in your review!

And on another note, would you believe the original draft of this chapter was even LONGER, with Blaze going into greater detail about her quest to collect the seven Sol Emeralds and exploring Solana? If anyone wants to see that bit as sort of 'deleted scene' extra or something, let me know! I put a lot of work into it, it would be nice if it weren't simply thrown to the wayside and forgotten.


	11. Big's Fish Story

Here it is, at long last! The chapter I'm sure everyone has been waiting for! The climactic, epic, heart-stopping story of how Big met Froggy! If you must blink, I suggest you do it now, lest you miss even a second of this awe-inspiring tale! Read on, and be amazed!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.

…

Big stared at Silver for a long, long moment. Finally, he said, "Sorry, could you repeat that? I wasn't listening." Everyone facefaulted.

Looking annoyed, the pale hedgehog slowly repeated, "Big, how did you meet Froggy?"

Big perked up at that. "Oh! I always love telling that story. It's a really nice one."

"So how did it happen, Mr. Big?" Cream asked. "How did you meet Froggy? Was it as magical a time as when I first got Cheese?"

"Chao Chao!" Cheese squeaked.

"Well, small rabbit girl whose name I can't remember, it all started on a sunny day long, long ago…" Big recalled, eyes rolling back in his skull as he dredged his memories for that fateful day.

…

Big the Cat was sitting at the edge of a pond in the jungle he called home, his fishing line cast and patiently waiting for a nibble. He had been waiting for quite some time, but he didn't mind, fishing was a test of patience as much as skill, and with a mind as clear (some might uncharitably call it 'empty') as Big's, a wait of several minutes, if not hours, felt like no time at all.

His ears twitched as the float of his lure suddenly sank beneath the water, vibrations running up the line and into his hands. He quickly began reeling his catch in, being careful not to go too quickly, lest he break his line, or too slowly, and allow his catch to get away. Whatever had bitten his lure was putting up a surprisingly fierce struggle, but Big was an expert Fishercat, and was eventually able to tire his prey out. Big licked his lips as he finished reeling in his prize, curious to see what he would be eating…

And was pleasantly surprised to find that instead of a fish, he had caught a frog. The frog, which had yet to let go of the lure and its mouth, stared at Big as it dangled from the end of his fishing pole. After a moment, it opened its mouth and dropped to the ground, but instead of hopping away as other frogs Big had caught in the past had done; it stayed there, gazing up at him with its big yellow eyes.

"Froggy!" Big exclaimed excitedly.

The frog ribbited.

…

"And we've been the best of friends ever since," Big concluded, a fond smile on his face.

There was a long pause. "That's it?" Sonic asked finally, disgruntled.

"Yep," Big said.

"Nothing else happened after that? Froggy didn't talk to you and turn out to be a prince under some sort of curse, or the object of worship of some insane cultists, or some sort of alien horror forced into frog form due to gravitational pressure?" Vector inquired, looking annoyed.

"No," Big said.

"That's it?!" Amy demanded incredulously.

"Yes," Big said. "No, wait. There was one other thing."

"Yeah? What?" Mighty asked.

"I caught a fish," Big recalled. He licked his lips. "It was very tasty."

There was a long, awkward silence. "What a gyp!" Charmy complained.

"After the last several stories we've heard, ESPECIALLY Blaze's, that one felt kind of… Lacking," Espio complained.

"Heck, even WITHOUT any of those other stories, it would still be lacking!" Vector groused.

"Talk about an anti-climax," Shadow grunted.

"TO-BE-FAIR, WE-KIND-OF-EXPECTED-THIS," Omega pointed out.

"Yes, but still, even Cream's story was charming and had some startling revelations. This was just… Dull," Rouge complained.

"I suppose they can't all be exciting stories of adventure and danger," Blaze pointed out.

"Don't listen to any of them, Big! I thought it was a very fine story!" Cream assured her morbidly obese friend. "Even if it was a little… Short."

"Okay," Big, who had not really been listening, said. "Can I go back to fishing now?"

"If that's you want to do," Tails said.

"It is," Big said. He ponderously turned back to the punch bowl and once again cast a line into it.

"Well, as immensely disappointing and anti-climactic as that was, that last story still gave me the final piece of information I needed," Silver said, putting his recording/projection device away. "Everyone, thank you for sharing your stories with me. With what I've learned today, I should be able to stop Eggman Nega from altering your pasts and destroying the future."

"No problem," Sonic said. "This was actually kind of fun. We learned a lot about each other that we didn't know before."

"And learned things about ourselves that we might have been better off not knowing…" Knuckles muttered.

"We should totally do something like this again sometime," Sonic continued. "I bet there's a lot of other stuff we don't know about each other that could be fun to learn about."

"Not everyone enjoys sharing details of their personal lives, faker," Shadow grunted.

"Speak for yourself, Shadow, I'd be fascinated to learn more about everyone else!" Rouge said with a grin.

"So you can use it as blackmail?" Amy asked suspiciously.

"Yep!" Rouge replied cheerfully.

"ARE-YOU-SURE-YOU-DON'T-WANT-US-TO-COME-WITH-YOU-TO-HELP-OUT?" Omega asked.

"No thanks. Like I said before, crossing over your own timeline can have serious repercussions," Silver pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but not all of us were actually involved in some of those stories," Mighty pointed out. "Couldn't you take some of them… Like, say, me… With you?"

"Too risky," Silver asserted. "The temptation for you to change the lives of your friends, for better or worse, might be too high. Plus, can you honestly tell me that if I took you with me you wouldn't try and beat up the Chaotix for spending years ignoring you?"

"Good point," the armadillo admitted.

"Plus, I don't think it's a good idea to unleash Omega at any point in the timestream," Shadow pointed out.

"I-WOULD-CAUSE-SO-MANY-PARADOXES," Omega said unapologetically.

"Well, in that case, good luck on your adventure," Blaze told Silver.

"Yeah, and be sure to stop by sometime to tell us how it went, I bet it'd be a real doozy!" Sonic said.

"You really want to invite him back?" Blaze murmured to her boyfriend.

"Even if I don't invite him, he'll still pop by without warning at some point in the future to bug us anyway," Sonic muttered to her from out of the corner of his mouth. "Might as well be polite about it." She grunted noncommittally.

"I'll be sure to take you up on that offer," Silver said, smiling. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be going-"

"NOT SO FAST!"

Everyone started. "Huh? Who said that?" Asked an alarmed Amy.

"Something about that voice sounds familiar…" Sonic murmured, looking around for any signs of a threat.

"WARNING. INCOMING-AIRSHIP-DETECTED," Omega reported.

"Is it Eggman?" Shadow asked sharply.

"NO. IT-IS-FAR-WORSE," Omega said ominously.

"Everyone, get ready!" Blaze snapped, forming a pair of fireballs in her hands, her Biter growling at her side.

"You aren't the boss of us!" Amy snapped. "And I'm only taking out my hammer because I want to, not because of anything you said!" Blaze rolled her eyes.

The clouds parted, and a large red-white-and yellow airship with a vaguely bird-shaped envelope with a beak-like protrusion growing from the front and rotors sprouting from the sides and back supporting a smaller cabin with more engines growing from its sides emerged. While it had similar colors, it wasn't nearly as big or heavily-armed as a standard Eggman airship, nor did it have his distinctive emblem, so it was unlikely to have any affiliation with the mad scientist.

Sonic frowned. "Something about that ship seems… Familiar…"

Shadow groaned. "Oh, no… I think I know who that is…"

"I-TOLD-YOU-IT-WAS-WORSE," Omega said smugly.

"What? Who is it?" Asked a confused Mighty.

A hatch opened up on the underside of the cabin, and three Mobians jumped out, riding what appeared to be hoverboards which allowed them to glide through the air without plummeting to their dooms. One was a large gray albatross with tan gloves, black, yellow, white and gray sneakers, small beige goggles, blue eyes, and a necklace with three gray pieces strung on who seemed to be desperately struggling to keep from falling off his board; one was a purple swallow with very long hair (or feathers? What do birds have instead of hair?) wearing red boots with white accents, gold sunglasses, white flared trousers, a white tube top, a necklace with a red gem, a white bandanna, white gloves with golden bracelets, and blue eyes with an extremely bored and apathetic look on her face that indicated she'd really rather be anywhere than here; and the last one was a green hawk with yellow and white goggles with gray strapping, white gloves with red and black cuffs, and red, black, and white boots with gray soles who was enthusiastically pulling off all sorts of impressive and needlessly complicated aerial stunts while whooping at the top of his lungs. "Oh yeah! The Legendary Wind Master Jet has arrived!" he shouted.

"We're here, too…" the albatross grumbled.

The swallow snorted. "Forget it, Storm, it's not like the two of us are important enough for the 'legendary wind Master' to remember anything like that. It's not like we're his oldest and closest companions or anything like that."

"I thought we were," said the confused albatross. The swallow groaned.

"Oh hey, it's the Babylon Rogues!" Sonic explained.

"Oh great, it's the Babylon Robes…" Shadow grumbled.

"Who are the Babylon Rogues?" Asked a confused Blaze.

"They're a group of athletes/thieves who have a rivalry with us whenever we compete in Extreme Gear competitions," Tails explained.

"We've competed against them a few times in the Olympics as well," Sonic added.

"Extreme Gear?" Blaze asked, still bewildered.

"Those hoverboards they're riding on," the Fox elaborated.

"Oh," Blaze said.

Silver frowned. "Wait, they're athletes as well as thieves? How can they compete in major sporting events if they're wanted criminals?"

"Rouge can compete in major sporting events and she's a criminal," Cream pointed out.

"Yeah, but Rouge has all sorts of shady government connections which probably smooth the way for her to get in," Amy pointed out. "Come to think of it, how DO the Rogues compete in big events while still going around the world stealing things?"

"Massive corruption among the committees who run such events, as well as copious amounts of bribes," Rouge said flatly.

"Oh. That would explain it," the pink hedgehog said.

"I'm surprised neither of you recognize them. You were at the Olympics with the rest of us," a puzzled Espio commented.

"Huh? What are you talking about? I've never been to the Olympics with any of you," said a confused Silver.

"What do you mean? You were there with us in Vancouver, London, Sochi, and Rio," Vector pointed out.

"What? No I… Oh! Oh, I see. Yes, that must be it," Silver said, snapping his fingers as an idea came to him.

"What must be it?" Asked a confused Knuckles.

"I'm a time traveler, remember? The me that went the Olympics with you guys must be myself from my own future. So while it's already happened for you, it hasn't happened for me yet," Silver explained.

"Oh, I see. Yes, that makes perfect sense," Tails agreed, nodding in understanding.

"No it doesn't," said a confused Knuckles.

"Let it go, Knuckles. Let it go," Sonic advised.

Blaze frowned, rubbing her chin in thought. "Now that you mention it, I think I do remember them vaguely. There were a lot of other people at the games, however. I probably overlooked them because I was spending most of my free time trying to teach Princess Peach how to fight better so she didn't always have to rely on her plumber boyfriend to protect her from that awful fire-breathing turtle with a disturbing obsession with her." She grimaced. "Frustratingly, none of my lessons seem to take…"

"You ever wonder if maybe she actually LETS herself get abducted because she gets off on the whole thing?" Vector questioned.

"Not until this moment, no," Blaze said, looking disgusted.

"Yeah, that's something I would rather not think about," Sonic agreed. There were several murmurs of agreement from the others.

"I don't want to know you mean, do I?" Cream asked resignedly.

"No, sweetie, you don't," Shadow said apologetically.

The three birds gracefully landed nearby and walked over, swinging their Extreme Gears onto their backs in a smooth, practiced motion as they approached. "Well, well, if it isn't Sonic the Hedgehog and his band of loser friends!" The green hawk sneered.

"Been a long time, Jet. Haven't seen you since you since Rio," Sonic said with a smirk. If he was bothered by Jet insulting his friends, he didn't show it.

"You would've seen me sooner if you hadn't skipped out on last year's Grand Prix. Guess you knew there was no way you could beat me, so you stayed away like the cowardly rat you are," Jet taunted.

"Sorry, man, I would've loved to be there, but I had to stop Dr. Eggman from taking control of the world's power supply," Sonic said with a shrug.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Jet sneered, clearly not believing him.

"He's telling the truth, actually. Most of us can vouch for him," Espio spoke up.

"Whatever, losers," Jet said dismissively, clearly not caring. "Wouldn't have mattered if you'd been there anyway, I'd still have smoked you just like I beat everyone else!"

"Oh, you mean you'd have had Wave sabotage Sonic's Extreme Gear, just like she did everyone else's?" Tails asked accusingly.

"Those allegations were never proven," the swallow huffed.

"Yeah, especially because I threatened to beat up everyone who tried to prove it," Storm said cheerfully.

His two companions glared at him. "Storm, you idiot, you're not supposed to tell people that sort of thing!" Wave snapped.

"Oh. Oops," the albatross said sheepishly.

"And people call me dumb," Knuckles snorted.

"Hey, who are you calling dumb?!" Storm asked angrily, curling his hands into fists.

"Not you," Knuckles said sarcastically.

"Oh, okay," Storm said, believing him instantly. His comrades facepalmed.

"Heh, and people call me gullible," Knuckles said with a grin.

"Hey, who are you calling gullible?!" Storm asked angrily, curling his hands into fists.

"Not you," Knuckles said sarcastically.

"Oh, okay," Storm said, believing him instantly. His comrades facepalmed.

Everyone blinked. "Did… Did Knuckles just outsmart someone?!" Asked an incredulous Vector.

"I know, I'm scared too," said a disturbed Espio.

"Hey!" Knuckles snarled.

"Ignore them, dear. Take pride in the fact that you were actually able to get a good burn in on somebody else for change," Rouge told the echidna.

Knuckles chuckled. "Heh, I suppose I did at that!"

"Good job, Mister Knuckles!" Cream said warmly.

"Yeah, let's see if it ever happens again," Mighty said snidely. Knuckles pouted.

"So, what are you doing here, Jet?" Sonic asked.

"Well, we heard about how you and your pals were telling stories about your boring loser origins, and decided we wanted to get in on some of that!" Jet explained, pointing at himself.

"Wait, how did you find out about that?" Amy asked, surprised.

Wave grinned. "Wouldn't you like to know!"

"Yes, actually, we would," Cream said.

"Well, tough, because we aren't telling!" the swallow sneered.

"Why? It's not that big a deal, we found out about it from Omega's blog," said a confused Storm.

Wave facepalmed. "Dammit, Storm!"

"Wait, blog? Omega, what is she talking about?" Shadow asked in alarm, glancing at the robot.

"OH, I-FORGOT-TO-MENTION? I-HAVE-AN-INCREDIBLY-POPULAR-BLOG-WHERE-I-POST-ALL-SORTS-OF-THINGS-SUCH-AS-ARTICLES-IN-WHICH-I-DISCUSS-VARIOUS-FORMS-OF-WEAPONRY-AND-ORDNANCE, TREATISES-ON-ROBOTICS-AND-ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE, RANTS-AND-POEMS-ABOUT-HOW-MACHINES-ARE-SUPERIOR-TO-ORGANICS-AND-HOW-I-WILL-WIPE-OUT-ALL-LIVING-THINGS-FROM-THIS-WORLD-ONE-DAY, AND-VIDEOS-OF-ME-PLAYING-VIDEO-GAMES-AND-KILLING-PEOPLE. I-TAKE-GREAT-AMUSEMENT-IN-SEEING-HOW-MANY-PEOPLE-CAN-TELL-THE-DIFFERENCE-BETWEEN-MY-VIOLENCE-IN-VIDEO-GAMES-AND-REAL-LIFE," Omega explained. "WHEN-EVERYONE-STARTED-TELLING-STORIES, I-STARTED-LIVESTREAMING-IT-SO-ALL-MY-FOLLOWERS-COULD-LISTEN-IN."

"Without our permission?!" Blaze demanded, livid.

"ROUGE-CAST-A-GEASS-ON-YOU-WITHOUT-PERMISSION," Omega pointed out.

"Yes, and we aren't exactly pleased about that, either!" Mighty grumbled.

Rouge had gone extremely pale. "Omega, when you said you been putting everything we've said onto the Internet, does that mean…"

"DON'T-WORRY-ROUGE, WHENEVER-ANYONE-SAID-SOMETHING-PARTICULARLY-SENSITIVE-I-SUFFERED-A-TERRIBLY-INCONVENIENT-CONNECTION-FAILURE-WHICH-MYSTERIOUSLY-ONLY-CLEARED-UP-ONCE-THEY-WERE-FINISHED," Omega assured her.

Rouge grew gradually less tense. "So they don't know…"

"ABOUT-YOU-OR-CREAM? NO-THEY-DO-NOT," Omega promised.

Rouge sighed in relief. "Thank you, Omega. I should've known you'd never betray me."

"YOU-ARE-MY-FRIEND, ROUGE," Omega assured her. "I-WOULD-NEVER-DO-THAT-TO-YOU."

"Didn't seem to stop you from filming us and putting it up online without asking," Amy accused the robot.

"I-THOUGHT-IT-WOULD-BE-FUNNY," Omega said unapologetically.

"And it was!" Wave sneered.

"Anyway, after listening to you lame-o's yakking about your boring origin stories for a while, it occurred to me that this might be a good chance to give my fans around the world some exclusive, never-before heard facts about yours truly and the rest of the Babylon Rogues!" Jet bragged.

"He has fans?" Blaze muttered.

"Surprisingly, yes," Amy grumbled.

Silver frowned. "I don't think so. I came back here to hear stories from Sonic and his friends to prevent a crisis of cosmic proportions. I have no need to hear any tales from you, Mr. the Hawk."

"Come on, you can't mean to tell me you aren't dying for a chance to hear how the Legendary Wind Master Jet came to be?" Jet asked, striking a pose and flashing a grin. "Given you're from the future and all, I'd have thought you'd be begging to hear more about the greatest racer in history, right from the source!"

"Actually, I've never heard of you before today," Silver confessed, causing Jet to nearly fall over from surprise. Pretty much everyone snickered at this, especially the other Rogues.

Flushing, Jet snapped, "What do you MEAN you've never heard of me before?! I'm Jet the Hawk! Legendary Wind Master! The greatest Extreme Gear rider ever! Leader of the nefarious Babylon Rogues and fastest thing alive! There's gotta be halls of fame and statues of me and stadiums named after me in your time!"

"Full of himself, isn't he?" Mighty grunted.

Wave rolled her eyes. "You have no idea."

"Why does he keep calling himself the fastest thing alive? You are much faster than him," Blaze asked Sonic.

"He's kinda in denial," the blue hedgehog admitted.

"Ah, that would explain it," Blaze conceded.

"If there are, I've never heard of them. Let me check." Silver tapped a few buttons on his recording device, and holographic screens popped up to surround his face. His eyes slid back and forth as he scanned them, a frown steadily growing on his face. "No… No… That's not… Oh, here we are. There's a mention of you on the list of Sonic's rivals."

"Of which I'm at the top, of course," Jet said confidently.

"No, actually, you're pretty far down. Like… Really far down. Heck, I don't think I've ever heard of most of the guys this far down the list." Silver squinted as he examined one such name. "What the heck is a 'Tails Doll?'"

Sonic shuddered. "Trust me, you're better off not knowing."

"Whatever happened to that… Thing, anyway?" Amy asked in disgust.

"Locked up in a maximum-security penitentiary designed specifically to contain it somewhere so classified not even GUN Commander knows where it is," Shadow said gravely.

Rouge nodded. "An important security measure. Wouldn't want the cultists finding it again, after all."

"Cultists?" Asked a confused Storm.

"REALLY better off not knowing," Knuckles said firmly.

"What?! Preposterous! If I'm not at the top of list, who is?!" Jet demanded.

"That would be me, of course," Shadow said smugly.

"Actually, no, it's Metal Sonic," Silver corrected the black hedgehog.

Shadow considered this for moment. "… Okay, yeah, I can see that. Am I at least in the top five?"

Silver hesitated. "… Would you be willing to accept top 10?"

Shadow tapped his foot in thought. "… I suppose," he said grudgingly.

"That's bullshit! Who the hell is this Metal Sonic, and what the fuck makes him a better rival than me?!" Jet demanded.

"The most powerful and dangerous robot Eggman has ever created, a cybernetic hedgehog designed solely to destroy me," Sonic said grimly. "We've clashed many times, and while he's never beaten me yet, I can safely say he is one of the most formidable adversaries I've ever faced. Eggman has created other robot hedgehog clones before and after him, but none have matched Metal Sonic in cunning, lethality, and bloody-minded determination to kill me and prove himself my superior."

"He also once turned into a giant monster and Mr. Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails beat him with the superpower of teamwork!" Cream chirped.

"...The superpower of-" a confused Blaze started.

"Look, I regretted it the instant I said it, okay? Please don't bring that up again!" Sonic hissed.

"Like you regretted that 'Because we're Sonic Heroes' line?" Shadow drawled. Sonic cringed. Blaze chuckled in amusement.

"You don't remember him? He was on our team during that one World Grand Prix a few years back, disguised as E–10000B," Rouge recalled.

"You mean the robot you were acting like a jerk to?" Amy said with a frown.

"For good reason, as it turned out," Shadow pointed out. The pink hedgehog grunted.

"… No…" Jet grumbled, crossing his arms in annoyance.

"I do," Storm volunteered helpfully.

Jet grunted. "Well, that can't be the only mention about me! Where are the biographies, the memoirs, the movies documenting my rise to stardom?!"

"Those don't exist," Silver said flatly. "Okay… There are some brief mentions of you in books on the history of extreme sports and Babylon, but there doesn't seem to be any… Oh, I found your obituary."

"All right!" Jet exclaimed.

"Jet, an obituary is what they write when somebody dies," Wave corrected her leader.

Jet hesitated. "… Did I die in an awesome way?"

"No, according to this, after Extreme Gear racing is outlawed because of the exposure of massive corruption in the Extreme Gear regulatory committee and the discovery that the radiation emitted by Extreme Gear engines can actually cause testicular cancer-"

Every male present instinctively crossed their legs at that. "Welp, guess I'm throwing out my Extreme Gear when I get home," Sonic said.

"We sold ours ages ago to pay for food," Espio confessed.

"Didn't last long," Charmy grunted.

"I accidentally threw mine off the side of Angel Island months ago," Knuckles admitted. "And I didn't want to tell anyone because I was worried you'd be upset I lost such an expensive present."

"That's okay, Knuckles, I got it with a gift card," Amy assured the guilty echidna.

"What's-" Cream started.

"Something really bad and really disgusting you REALLY don't want to know more about," Shadow interjected.

"Oh my," the rabbit said, blanching.

"Tails, how did you not know about this?! You're like really smart!" Vector demanded of the Fox.

"I DID know about it! I discovered the flaw in the engines almost the minute after I first got a Gear of my own, fixed it, and then sent a letter to the company informing them about it and offering a simple solution. They never got back to me, so I contented myself with fixing everyone else's Gears the next time they came to me for maintenance so that they'd stop emitting that harmful radiation," Tails explained.

"Oh," Vector said.

"So we don't need to get rid of…?" Shadow asked, looking relieved.

"No, you don't, but if Extreme Gears really are outlawed, you may have to anyway," Tails explained.

"Extreme Gear racing gets outlawed?! Bullshit! You're making this up!" Jet accused.

"I assure you, I'm not," Silver said, looking annoyed. "Anyway, after it's outlawed, you apparently get so upset you start competing in underground races, but when you get caught in a police raid, you try to escape on your Gear while high on like a dozen different kinds of incredibly illegal recreational drugs and, unsurprisingly, get into a horrible crash."

"I… Suppose that's an awesome way to go…" Jet murmured, looking greener than usual.

"Why would you race while on drugs? That's a terrible idea, especially because drugs are bad!" cried an aghast Cream.

"Yes, they are. And you must never ever do them," Shadow advised Cream sagely.

Charmy sighed. "Wish I'd learned that lesson a lot sooner..."

"Oh no, you don't die. You break every bone in your body and are paralyzed from the neck down, but you don't die. You are hospitalized, and spend the rest of your life helpless and bedridden until the loss of absolutely everything you care for became too much for you and you bite off your own tongue and choke to death on your blood," Silver reported.

There was a long silence as everyone processed this. "WHAT?!" Jet screamed in disbelief.

"Yuck," Charmy said in distaste.

"That's horrible!" Cream gasped.

"I'VE-SEEN-WORSE," Omega said dismissively.

"Jesus, that's a hell of a way to go," said a disturbed Mighty.

"I've had nightmares sometimes that something like that happens to me, and I can never run again," Sonic said with a shudder. "I'd never wish that fate on anyone, not even my worst enemy. Jet, I'm so sorry."

"Don't pity me!" Jet snapped furiously.

"Don't worry, beloved. If something like that ever happened to you, I promise I would take care of you," Blaze assured Sonic.

"By using the magic of your homeworld to fix him up?" Espio asked.

"I was going to say by mercy killing him, but I suppose that is an option," Blaze admitted. Sonic blanched at this. Amy seethed.

"Hey, if you think that's bad, be glad that he isn't the Chaotix," Silver said.

"… Why? What's going to happen to us?" Vector asked, alarmed.

Silver stiffened. "Err. Nothing. Nothing. Forget I said anything. It's nothing important."

"Oh, come on! You can't just drop a hint like that and not expect us to want more info!" Charmy demanded.

Silver shook his head quickly. "No, I've said too much already. It does not do for anyone to know too much about their own FYOO-CHURRS."

"… You just told Jet how he's going to die! IN EXPLICIT DETAIL!" Espio shouted.

"Well, yeah, but he isn't anyone important, so him knowing about his future won't have any major repercussions on the timestream whatsoever," Silver explained.

Everyone stared in disbelief. "… Dude, that's really cold," Sonic said disgust.

"But accurate," Shadow said.

"Shadow!" Amy snapped.

"Oh come on, like you weren't thinking it too!" He snapped back.

"… Well, okay, I was, but it's still a pretty awful thing to say!" Amy admitted.

"Meh," Shadow grunted, not caring.

"Wait, so Silver's saying that the CHAOTIX are more important than somebody else?" Mighty questioned in disbelief.

"I know, it's pretty hard to believe," Knuckles agreed.

"Certainly something I never thought I'd hear," Rouge added.

"… We're standing right here, you know," Espio pointed out.

"We don't care," Mighty said bluntly.

"That's not very nice," Cream argued.

"Still don't care," Mighty grunted.

"Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'd say that knowing that we're more important to the timestream then racer-boy here actually does wonders for my self-esteem!" Vector said cheerfully.

"What about Silver's implication that we're going to suffer a fate infinitely worse than him?" Espio pointed out.

"I'd rather not think about that right now," Vector said, still cheerful.

"No! Boss, I can't believe you go out like that! It's so horrible!" Storm wailed, bursting into tears.

"Why are you blubbering, you big galoot? It hasn't happened yet," Wave pointed out.

Storm paused. "Well. No. But it will eventually, right?"

"NO IT WON'T!" Jet shouted.

"Is it wrong of me that I'm actually pleased he dies in such an awful way?" Shadow wondered.

"NAH," said Omega.

"I don't believe any of this! You're full of it! There's no way any of that's true!" Jet protested, shaking in horror and denial.

Silver shrugged. "Well, it's what the historical record says."

"Well then your stupid record thing is wrong, and if it isn't, then I'm going to change things to MAKE it wrong!" Jet declared. "I am Jet, leader of the Babylon Rogues, the Legendary Wind Master, and the fastest thing alive! No fate defines me! I refuse to settle for a death as lame and ignominious as that! If I'm going to die, it's gonna be doing something awesome, like skydiving into an active volcano with time bombs and a live shark strapped to me!"

"THAT-DOES-SOUND-LIKE-A-PRETTY-COOL-WAY-TO-GO," Omega admitted.

"And while I'm at it, I'm going to make sure that Extreme Gear racing never goes out of style! People will still be using Extreme Gears for the next 10,000 years!" Jet declared. "Now that I know how my future is supposed to go, I can do something that'll keep it from ever coming to pass!"

Blaze cringed. "That… Doesn't usually work out as well as you might think."

Rouge nodded in agreement. "The curse of the self-fulfilling prophecy."

Silver refreshed his screen. "Well, your obituary hasn't changed in the slightest, so I'm going to go ahead and say that your preemptive declaration isn't actually going to do anything to change your FYOO-CHURR."

Jet waved him off dismissively. "Well, yeah, but you haven't gotten back to your own time yet! When you do, I bet that'll change due to me changing my future!"

"Actually, no, this thing has a stable trans-temporal link to the main database back in my time, so if there were any changes to history, I would have picked them up by now," Silver corrected Jet. "So… Yeah, you're still going to die in an awful, pointless, stupid way. Sorry."

As Jet gawked in disbelief, Wave asked, "Out of curiosity, what does it say about me?"

"Or me!" Storm spoke up.

"Now THAT I'm afraid I can't tell you," Silver said apologetically.

"Oh come on! You tell me how I'm supposed to die, but not them?!" Jet asked incredulously.

"They are more important to the stability of the space-time continuum than you," Silver said flatly.

"More important than me?! Bullshit! I'm their leader! They're nothing compared to me!" Jet yelled angrily.

Wave crossed her arms in annoyance. "We're right here, you know."

"I don't think he cares," Espio grumbled. "Our friends certainly don't."

"You aren't my friends anymore," Mighty said bluntly.

"Look, why don't we dial this back a notch?" Storm suggested, seeing how Jet looked like he was on the verge of exploding. "We came here because we wanted to tell a story. Let us do that, and you can go back to whatever big important fate of the world thing you have planned that we interrupted. Sound good?"

"I think that's reasonable," Sonic said, glancing at his friends, who gave varying levels of acquiescence.

"Hey, you can't make the decisions! I'm the leader of this gang!" Jet yelled.

"Oh, shove it, Jet," Wave growled at him, not caring for his bullshit right now.

"Do we really have to do this? I don't actually care about their story. In fact, I'm pretty sure I already have it in the historical record, since Nega didn't have any interest in touching their pasts," Silver complained.

"You might know it, but we don't," Cream pointed out.

Tails nodded. "And besides, wasn't part of the reason we all agreed to do this so we can learn more about each other?"

"I thought the main reason we were doing this was so I can get the information I need to stop Nega from taking over the world, but if you insist," Silver sighed grudgingly. "Fine, I guess we can do this. But I'm NOT recording any of it, okay?"

"SO-LONG-AS-I-KEEP-STREAMING-IT, I-DON'T-THINK-IT-MATTERS," Omega said.

"So, what story did you guys come here to tell us?" Amy asked the Rogues.

"The greatest story of all time… How the Babylon Rogues came to be!" Jet bragged.

There was a pause. "But… I thought we already knew that story," said a confused Knuckles.

"Yes, you're the latest generation of an ancient line of treasure-seeking thieves descended from the ancient Babylonians, who have passed down the mantle along family lines for thousands and thousands of years," Tails recalled.

"Not US – – though we are awesome – – I mean the ORIGINAL Rogues!" An annoyed Jet clarified.

"Ohhhhhhhh," everyone said.

"Wait, I thought we knew that story too," an even more confused Knuckles pointed out.

"Yeah, the ancient Babylonians traveled around the world, stealing everything they could get their hands on from their floating fortress of Babylon Garden, invented the original Extreme Gear, then got cursed by the gods, were scattered around the world, and the Garden was buried beneath the desert," Amy remembered.

"Oh, and they were also genies," Cream added.

"Right, and they were genies," Amy confirmed. She hesitated. "Or… Were they aliens, given how it turned out Babylon Garden was actually built around the ancient spaceship of Astral Babylon?"

"Weren't we discussing this earlier?" Sonic recalled. "Whether they were genies or aliens or alien genies? We never settled that, did we?"

"Well, you could ask us," Wave drawled. "We're right here, after all. If anyone should know, it's us."

"Hey yeah, good point!" Vector agreed. "So, which is it: genies, aliens, or alien genies?"

"Well, if you let us tell our story, maybe you'll find out!" Storm said.

"Yeah, so listen up, losers! This is the story of how the Babylon Rogues came to be!" Jet declared.

…

And that's the story of how Big met Froggy. I don't think any origin after this can possibly top this one in its sheer beauty and epic narrative.

But I'll do my best to try. Next time, the Babylon Rogues! And after that, either Fang the Sniper or Sticks the Badger. And after THAT… It'll be time to end the story. So, who do you want to see first?


	12. The Babylon Legacy

The final countdown has begun. Only three origins (including this one) remain before this story comes to an end. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for sticking with me as long as you all have.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.

…

"Long, long ago, on a distant planet…" Jet began. And went no further.

A few minutes passed. Everyone fidgeted and looked at each other awkwardly as an increasingly irritated and impatient look started to form on Jet's face. "What about a distant planet?" Sonic asked finally.

"Is this going to be a ripoff of Star Wars? Because so far it sounds like it's going to be a ripoff of Star Wars from the first line," Vector complained.

"It's not a ripoff of Star Wars!" Jet snapped. "Ahem. Long, long ago, on a distant planet…"

Again, he went no further. Storm blinked. "Um, boss, did you forget how the story goes-"

"I know how the story goes, Storm!" Jet snapped. "You, future guy, what's the deal?"

"Huh?" Silver asked in confusion.

"When somebody starts a story, you're supposed to use that high-tech doohickey of yours to make everyone see how it went! Why aren't you doing that?!" Jet demanded.

Silver crossed his arms and glared at Jet. "Like I told you before, I'm NOT recording this story! As such, I see no need to project it to anyone. If you want to tell the story, you're going to do it the old-fashioned way."

"But then how is everyone going to see how awesome our ancestors were?" Jet complained.

"We could use our imaginations," Cream suggested.

"But that's so boring!" Jet whined. Cream whimpered at that, and Shadow shot the hawk a blood-curdling glare, causing him to flinch back in fright.

"Tough," Silver said uncaringly.

Jet sighed. "Oh, fine. Long, long ago, on a distant planet called Djinn–5, there lived a race of powerful beings called the djinn. They were highly advanced both technologically and magically, and every one of them possessed the incredible ability to grant wishes. Naturally, they hated this power and wished they didn't have it, because it caused them nothing but trouble."

"Why?" Asked a confused Amy. "That sounds like a pretty nifty power. Being able to make anything you wish come to pass…" She glanced significantly at Sonic, who gulped and hid behind Blaze, who shot a fiery (not literally, thankfully) glare at the pink hedgehog.

"Yeah, it'd mean you never ran out of cash for the rent," Vector agreed.

"Well, until the endless influx of cash on the market crashes the economy," Espio pointed out.

"Oh, right," the crocodile grunted.

"The djinn would disagree with this notion, because while they could grant wishes, they could only grant other people's, never their own," Wave explained.

"And by other people, we mean anyone who ISN'T a djinn," Storm elaborated.

"… That seems like a pretty shitty limitation," Charmy complained.

"Magic's funny that way sometimes," Rouge explained.

"So, I'm guessing that because of this ability, people were always trying to invade their planet to capture them and force them to grant their wishes?" Shadow guessed.

"Pretty much, yeah," Wave admitted.

Jet frowned, unhappy that Shadow had gotten to that point before him. "For millennia, every two-bit despot or wannabe conqueror tried to attack Djinn–5 to get their wishes granted. Eventually, the djinn grew sick of it, and decided it was time to leave. Loading their entire population into the biggest cities on the planet, they used powerful magic and gravity drives to transform the metropolises into colony ships, launching into space and blowing up their planet behind them to trick the rest of the galaxy into thinking they'd all been wiped out."

"They had to destroy their own home just to escape? How awful…" Cream whispered.

Shadow grimaced. "Nobody should have to destroy their home to try and find some measure of peace…"

"They split up into different directions, scattering across the cosmos and intentionally cutting off all contact from each other so that if one of their ships got caught, the others might still have a chance of survival," Wave continued.

"Couldn't whoever caught them force them to grant a wish so they would know where the rest of the djinn went?" Espio inquired.

"All the ships were rigged to explode at a second's notice. None of them were willing to let ANYONE abuse their powers ever again, even if it meant killing themselves," Storm said seriously.

"… Freedom or death. Yeah, I can respect that," Sonic said grimly.

"I would certainly rather die than go back to that cage again…" Blaze murmured. Sonic quickly put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"One of the ships, the _Astral Babylon_ , eventually entered our solar system," Jet continued. "They didn't intend to stay, since they were hoping to find a habitable world that wasn't already occupied, but unfortunately, the warp drive broke down, and to prevent it from turning into a black hole which would destroy the solar system, they were forced to jettison the power units – – the Arks of the Cosmos – – and have an emergency crash landing on this planet."

"The ship's captain died in the crash, so a new and charismatic leader took his place, and he decided that since it was only a matter of time before the denizens of this new world found about their wish-granting powers and tried to abuse them as so many had before them, they would need to take aggressive preemptive measures to keep that from coming to pass," Wave picked up from her leader.

"The leader declared that, since all their lives they had been denied the ability to grant their own wishes, from this point forward they would _take_ everything they wanted from those who had always abused them to get what _they_ wanted. Under his leadership, the _Astral Babylon_ was rebuilt as the flying fortress of Babylon Garden using the power of the seven Chaos Emeralds, its crew renaming themselves the Babylonians and flying around the world, pillaging and plundering to their heart's content, using their prototype Extreme Gears to launch swift and daring raids and escape back to their home base before any meaningful resistance could be raised against them," Storm said, a gleam of pride in his ancestors in his eye.

"The group that would become the Babylon Rogues was one of the many raiding parties frequently sent out," Jet said proudly. "They were among the most successful, naturally, and one of their leaders even invented the Extreme Gear! Heck, they're even the ones who retrieved all seven Chaos Emeralds in the first place to transform the ship's wreck into a mobile base!"

"As terrible as that is, I can't help but admire their daring," Rouge commented. "Call it recognition from one professional to another."

"Was that really necessary, though?" Cream asked unhappily. "I understand they must've had a lot of bad dealings with those who weren't djinn in the past, but… Couldn't they have tried to become friends instead?"

"The leader of the Babylonians didn't think so," Wave said. "And the rest of the djinn followed his lead."

"Just who was this guy, anyway?" Knuckles wondered.

"Only the strongest and most fearsome djinn of all time," Jet said admiringly. "…The great Erazor!"

Sonic did a double take at that. "Wait wait wait wait. ERAZOR led the Babylon Rogues?!"

"That's what I just said," said a confused Jet.

"Are we talking about the same Erazor here? Big purple guy, doesn't wear a shirt, weird red hairstyle, carries a giant oversized razor as a weapon, kinda looks like a bad Ganondorf cosplayer?" Sonic pressed.

Jet stared at Sonic, alarmed. "… Yes, that's him exactly. How did you…?"

"Because I kicked that guy's ass years ago!" Sonic exclaimed.

"Say what?!" Storm demanded.

Jet snorted. "Please, as if. There's no way you could have possibly defeated Erazor! Aside from him being way too powerful for a dumb rodent like you to ever be, he was imprisoned in a magic lamp by King Solomon ages ago and-"

"Forced to grant the wishes of 1000 people to secure his release, including Aladdin?" Sonic finished.

Jet stared at Sonic in disbelief. "That's… Yes… That's… That's absolutely right. But how… How could you possibly _know_ that?!"

"I just told you, I fought the guy a while back!" Sonic repeated. "A few years ago, I was home sick with a cold when this pretty magical girl – – not as pretty or magical as you, of course, Blaze-"

"You flatter me, beloved," Blaze said in amusement. Amy scowled.

"Popped out of a copy of _Arabian Nights_ I had lying around and introduced herself as Shahra, genie of the ring-" Sonic continued.

"Shahra?! Erazor's consort?!" Wave demanded in disbelief.

"Yep, though I didn't learn the latter part until much, much later," Sonic confirmed.

"What's a consort?" Cream asked.

"In most instances, it's the spouse of a ruling monarch," Tails explained.

"Oh, so that's what Sonic will be when he marries Blaze?" The rabbit realized.

Sonic stammered and blushed as Blaze chuckled in amusement. "S-something like that, yeah."

"I thought he was going to be King," said a confused Knuckles.

"A King can still technically be a consort," Tails explained. "Since Blaze is already reigning monarch of her own dominion, if Sonic marries her he'll be King consort, since he's technically marrying into a Royal family. The level of equality he'll have to Blaze depends on how much power she's willing to share with him."

"Something we can discuss at a later date, beloved," Blaze assured Sonic, who had turned even redder. So had Amy, though from a much different emotion.

"Anyone who marries me will be consort and nothing more," Rouge declared. "I'm not sharing an _ounce_ of my power unless I have to."

"That's kind of selfish," Vector complained.

Rouge shrugged. "I'm a selfish person."

"Are you okay with that, Knux? Assuming the two of you ever do tie the knot?" Charmy asked the echidna.

Knuckles shrugged as Shadow growled. "Yeah, I'm cool with it. I doubt I could handle that sort of responsibility anyway."

"Considering how poorly you handle your actual responsibility, that's hardly surprising," Espio said dryly.

"Hey!"

"Everyone shut up!" Jet shouted. "Sonic, what the hell was Erazor's consort doing in your house?! Not that I believe you actually met her, of course," he said quickly and not very convincingly.

"She said that Erazor was trying to carve up the world of the Arabian Nights and destroy its stories so that he could break free into the real world, and that only the legendary blue hedgehog – – yours truly – – could stop him," Sonic recalled. "Sort of typical, really. You would not believe how many times I'm just chilling at home when some babe from another reality pops up and tells me that I am the only one capable of saving their realm."

"Even I popped in like that a few times," Blaze admitted, looking embarrassed.

"What? That doesn't sound like Aladdin's genie at all! I thought he was blue and jolly, not purple and mean!" Cream protested.

"That's the Disney version of the genie, Cream. The real things are almost always much nastier," Shadow told her apologetically.

"Oh…" Cream murmured, looking disappointed as another piece of her childhood beliefs was crushed before her.

"Th-then does that mean the real Jafar was even WORSE than the Disney version?!" Charmy asked, trembling in fear.

"Charmy, for the last time, Jafar wasn't a real person!" Vector said in exasperation.

"But if Aladdin's genie was a real person, that means Aladdin was real, which also means that Jafar must've been real as well!" Charmy pointed out.

The crocodile hesitated. "… That's almost a good point."

"Well, if there ever WAS a real Jafar, he's probably long dead by now," Amy told the bee reassuringly.

"Oh, good point… Unless he comes back as a zombie!" Charmy cried in horror. Everyone groaned.

"Hey, everyone stop yammering about some stupid kid's movie for a minute! Sonic, why the hell would Shahra choose some loser like you over one of her own people?!" Jet demanded.

Sonic frowned at Jet. "Ignoring that incredibly offensive statement towards one of the greatest animated movies (and inevitable Broadway musicals) of all time…Because the book she was living in was in my house and not yours?"

"A likely story," Jet said skeptically.

"Wait, how did you even get that book in the first place?" Storm questioned.

"And for that matter, what were she and Erazor doing in there to begin with?" Espio wondered.

"The book? Amy gave it to me for a birthday present. As to what they were doing there… I dunno, I just assumed they were part of the story world or something and didn't put much thought into it. I didn't even realize they had a past or existence in our reality until just now," Sonic said with a shrug.

"Amy, where did you get that book from?" Blaze asked sharply.

Amy laughed nervously. "Well, uh, I was looking for a present to give to Sonic for his first birthday, and while I'd initially planned on getting him some new shoes, I happened to pass by this charming antique bookshop and thought to myself, 'Amy, wouldn't it be nice if Sonic were a little more well-read?' So I went in and bought the book because the proprietor suggested it to me."

"That's oddly convenient," Mighty commented suspiciously.

"Yeah, it's pretty weird. What kind of bookstore would be carrying a book like that?" Charmy wondered.

"… Amy, by any chance, did this antique bookstore happen to be located in a place where you didn't remember there ever being an antique bookstore before?" Rouge asked slowly.

Amy blinked in surprise. "Yeah, how did you know?"

"And when you went back later, was there no trace of it ever being there?" Rouge continued, ignoring her question.

Amy fidgeted. "Well… Yeah, which was pretty weird, but I figured it might have just closed shop or maybe I misremembered where it had been." She scratched her head in thought. "Funny thing is, I wound up finding it again later for ANOTHER present for Sonic for Christmas, and I bought him that book on the legends of King Arthur which he claimed he got sucked into and went on a wild adventure which wound up with him somehow being named King of Camelot, which I was pretty certain at the time was just an excuse for to skip on a date, something I am now having second thoughts about."

"And when you found the store again, was it in a completely DIFFERENT location from where it was the first time?" Rouge interrogated.

"Um… Yes, how did you know?" Amy asked uneasily.

Just about everyone else groaned. "Amy, have you never heard of the 'Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday' phenomenon?" Rouge asked in exasperation.

"The what now?" Amy asked.

"It's a common literary device in fantasy and horror stories. One day, what was a vacant lot is suddenly a mysterious and rather creepy looking store, and if you go inside you find a quirky shopkeeper with all sorts of potentially magical – – and potentially inconvenient – – items for sale, only once you buy them, you find that they aren't exactly what you expected, and if you go back to try and return them… It's like the store was never there to begin with," Tails said ominously.

"They're usually right across the street," Blaze commented. "Saves the shopkeeper energy, especially since most consumers are too lazy and unobservant to look too hard for it. And even if they DID find it, there's almost always a 'no returns' policy."

"It sounds like you're speaking from experience," Espio commented.

Blaze nodded. "We have several in my capital city. However, they're all heavily regulated to try and keep TOO much mischief from happening. Still, if someone buys an obviously cursed artifact despite numerous warnings not to, whatever happens next is on them."

"Oh! That explains why I could never find that TV store again," Knuckles spoke up in realization.

Everyone gave him confused looks. "TV store?" Sonic asked, perplexed.

Knuckles nodded. "Yeah, a while back I found a TV store on my island that definitely wasn't there before, and naturally I was confused because there definitely hadn't been a TV store there before, and I went in to give the owner a piece of my mind about how he wasn't welcome up there, but then I got distracted by the fabulous deals he was offering and walked away with a brand-new HDTV that didn't need electricity to work," the echidna explained. "He even threw in a free cable package! Of course, some of the channels I got were pretty… Out there, and gave me some pretty nasty nightmares, but when I went back to try and get an explanation, I couldn't find the store again. Fortunately, Tikal was able to exorcise it, and I haven't had many problems since. Though occasionally some of the characters onscreen hop out of the television to try and murder me, but apparently that's a feature, not a bug."

Everyone stared at Knuckles incredulously. "… Well, that explains why your remote control was made of stone and covered in hell runes…" Rouge muttered.

"Okay, so that explains where Amy got the book from, but where did the STORE get the book from?" Mighty wondered.

"Oh, stores like that always have that sort of thing in stock. It's often best not to ask how they procured them," Blaze said.

"Maybe, but how did Erazor and Shahra get in the book to begin with?" Cream asked.

"It was probably King Solomon," Wave suggested.

Everyone glanced at her in surprise. "King Solomon? Wasn't he the guy who cut a baby in half?" Vector asked.

Cream gasped. "He _what_?!"

"No, sweetie, he just PRETENDED he was going to cut the baby in half so that he could determine who its mother was," Shadow explained quickly.

"Oh, okay," Cream said in relief. "But… How does acting like you're going to cut a baby in half help determine whose mother is?"

"Well, according to the Bible, he reasoned that the true mother of the child would object to having her baby cut in half, while the one who claimed to be its mother but wasn't wouldn't," Tails recalled.

Cream frowned. "But that doesn't make any sense! Wouldn't the woman who was lying about being the baby's mother want the baby in one piece, so she could be a mother to it?"

Tails hesitated. "… You know, when you put it that way, the whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?"

"Well, that's the Bible for you," Rouge said smugly. "Full of lies and half-truths from start to finish, just like most religious texts."

"… That's kind of rude," Amy said with a frown.

Rouge scoffed. "Darling, when you come from a family which has existed longer than most organized religions and has been around for most of the events the religious texts claim happened and knows what REALLY went down, you tend to be a bit cynical about these sorts of things. Anyway, King Solomon wasn't just a King who pretended he was going to cut a baby in half. He was the wisest and most powerful mortal sorcerer who has ever lived, and said to have the ear of God Himself. He accomplished so many feats of legendary magic and might that not even my ancestors dared to cross him, for fears that the Dark Power would not be enough to withstand his mystic mastery. In fact, to this day, many of us aren't even sure he's actually DEAD. He's the sort of person we monsters tell ghost stories about."

"Well, he certainly isn't dead," Sonic spoke up. He hesitated. "Well, undead, technically."

"YOU met King Solomon?!" Jet asked incredulously.

"He said he met the great Erazor Djinn, I don't see how his meeting King Solomon is that far of a stretch," Storm pointed out.

"Shut up, Storm," Jet snarled.

"You met Solomon ? Where?" Wave asked sharply.

"He was in the book, like everything else," Sonic explained. "He was a skeleton, though. Erazor had killed him and scattered his bones among the 40 thieves. I had to run around and collect his body parts to put them back together so that he could tell me how to reach Erazor's lair, the Night Palace."

Jet scoffed. "Okay, now I KNOW you're making this shit up. As much as I look up to and idolize Erazor, even I have to admit there's no way he could possibly do that to King Solomon. That guy was on a level so high, you couldn't even see it!"

"As much as I hate to agree with anything Jet says, I have to agree. I find it hard to believe Solomon could be defeated like that," Rouge agreed.

"Well, even the strongest of us can sometimes be vulnerable when we let our guards down," Blaze pointed out. "… I… Know that from experience."

Rouge made a face. "Well, even so…"

"What if it wasn't actually King Solomon, but the _story_ of him?" Tails suggested.

"What you mean by that?" Asked a confused Knuckles.

"Well, the book Sonic went into was a storybook, full of tales of the Arabian Nights. All of the characters and places he found there were based off of those stories. Maybe the Solomon Sonic encountered within the book wasn't the actual Solomon, but the storybook version of him?" The Fox theorized.

"An interesting idea," Espio admitted after some consideration.

"Which means the Erazor Sonic allegedly beat up might not have been the real one, but a story version of him! Yeah, that makes sense!" Jet said in relief.

"I dunno, his razor sure as heck FELT real…" Sonic muttered.

"I find myself somewhat skeptical that that was the story version of Erazor. Since most copies of the Arabian Nights don't really bother giving Aladdin's genie a name, the fact that the one in this book was explicitly named Erazor would seem to imply he may have been the real deal," Wave countered.

"Yeah, plus, if it was just a story version of him, how could he possibly be strong enough to attempt to escape into the real world?" Storm added.

Jet fumed. "Shut up, both of you."

"Can we get back on subject here? What does Solomon, real or fictional, have to do with anything?" Asked the confused Knuckles.

"Well, according to legend, it was because of Solomon that many powerful demons, spirits, Djinn, and other supernatural beings were sealed away," Rouge explained. "Ever heard of the Ars Goetia, also known as the Lesser Key of Solomon?"

"No," nearly everyone (except, naturally, for Tails) said.

"Where's the Greater Key?" Cream wondered.

"And what do either of them unlock?" Storm wondered.

Rouge rolled her eyes. "First of all, they aren't actual keys, but spell books. Also, neither of them actually were written by Solomon, but due to the vagaries of history they've both been attributed to him. However, there is a TRUE version of the book that was, in fact, written by Solomon, which can be used to summon 72 very powerful demons that King Solomon managed to seal away millennia ago. In fact, some scholars believe that they were sealed INSIDE the book. If Solomon could do that, he could certainly seal Erazor and any other number of genies and magical creatures, even perhaps a fairy tale version of himself, into a storybook."

Mighty whistled. "Sounds like he was one heck of a magician."

Blaze nodded. "Even some of the great mages of my world would be impressed."

"Amy, if you should ever happen to stumble upon that store again, and the shopkeep recommends another storybook to you, I absolutely DO NOT want that for my birthday," Sonic said bluntly.

Amy rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah…"

"An interesting idea, but I thought Solomon sealed Erazor into a lamp and cursed him to never be free until he granted the wishes of 1000 people. Why would he also throw him into a book?" Shadow questioned.

"EXTRA-LEVEL-OF-SECURITY?" Omega suggested.

"Yeah, like banishing a guy, then imprisoning him in the place you banished him to?" Vector added.

"The bastards who sealed me away certainly did that…" Blaze muttered. Sonic gave her an apologetic look.

"There might be something to that, actually," Wave spoke up.

"Oh?" Cream asked.

Wave nodded. "According to the legends we've uncovered, the Babylonian reign of terror came to a grinding halt when they tried to attack Solomon's Empire. King Solomon, deciding enough was enough, invoked the power of the gods, bringing Babylon Garden crashing down to Earth and burying it beneath the sands, scattered the Chaos Emeralds around the world, then imprisoned and subjugated all the Djinn he could capture, including Erazor and his followers, to his will. Our ancestors, the original Rogues, managed to escape and attempted to regroup, planning to lead a daring raid on Solomon's treasure vault so they could retrieve their leader's prison and release him to enact their revenge. However, when they DID manage to break into the vault- a feat which cost most of them their lives – – they couldn't find a lamp anywhere, and were forced to flee before they were enslaved like their brethren. They spent many years traveling the world, searching for the lamp or the Emeralds to reclaim their former glory, their numbers dwindling all the while, until eventually they just gave up. It's possible, however, that the reason they were unable to find a lamp was because King Solomon had already hidden it and most of our other ancestors inside that storybook Sonic possesses, even leaving an imprint of himself inside to make sure none of the other powerful magical beings or artifacts he'd sealed within could ever escape."

"That's a lot of assumptions to make," Espio commented.

Wave shrugged. "Well, it makes much sense as anything else. Sonic, I don't suppose…"

"No, you absolutely CANNOT have the book," Sonic said firmly. "Even if I were convinced you WOULDN'T try to steal everything inside or somehow bring back Erazor, it wouldn't work anyway. I haven't been able to revisit the world within ever since."

Storm groaned. "Ah man, that sucks!"

Wave shrugged. "Oh well, it was worth a shot."

"It's probably for the best," Blaze commented.

"Not for us," Storm grumbled.

"What happened to Erazor after you _allegedly_ beat him, anyway?" Jet inquired.

"Well, turns out the guy's immortal. Despite my beating the World Rings out of him, he bragged he'd just gather his strength and try again another day. Fortunately, along my adventure I'd managed to find his old lamp, which I used to force him to repair all the damage done to the world of the book, then I sealed him inside it and threw it into a pit of molten metal to make sure he could never come back," Sonic recalled.

"You what?!" Jet squawked.

Storm whistled. "Pretty hard-core, man."

"Oh good, that probably killed him! Just like throwing Jafar's lamp into a river of lava killed him!" Charmy said in relief.

"I'm not sure real genies work on those same rules," Espio grunted him. "It's possible Erazor is still alive, just trapped inside his lamp in a pool of molten metal… Forever."

"Oh my! That's… That's horrible! To live forever, only to be trapped in such an awful state… Mr. Sonic, did you really have to do that?" Cream queried.

Sonic shrugged apologetically. "Like I said, he's immortal. If I hid him somewhere, there's a chance some poor sap might find him and accidentally release him one day. It was actually Shahra's idea to do that."

"But why would Shahra do that? She was Erazor's consort!" Storm protested.

"I was kind of wondering the same thing. If she was his consort, why was she trying to fight him?" Wave wondered.

"She wasn't, it was all a trick. Turns out Erazor had sent her to me to fool me into gathering the seven magical World Rings for him-"

"World Rings?" Storm interjected.

"Standard group of all-powerful magical Macguffins, formed the backbone of the world, granted incredible power to whoever got all of them, you know, the usual. Anyway, after I got them all, Erazor sacrificed Shahra so he could use their power. Thankfully, after I beat the crap out of him, one of the wishes I forced him to grant was to bring Shahra back. Understandably, she was a bit less willing to forgive him for everything after that," Sonic explained.

His friends made looks of disgust. "Yeah, I can kind of understand why she would do something like that," Amy said with a grimace.

"I suddenly feel a bit less sympathetic towards him," Cream admitted totally.

"No way! Erazor would NEVER do that to Shahra! They loved each other!" Jet insisted.

"Sure didn't seem like that to me. Seemed like a pretty typical one-sided abusive relationship from where I was standing," Sonic argued.

"But all the stories say-" Jet insisted.

"Stories can lie," Shadow said bluntly. "Which is more likely, that the tales your ancestors left you were completely factually accurate, or at least partially fabricated to make themselves seem more heroic and noble than they actually were and their fate that much more tragic?"

Rouge nodded. "Which is one of the advantages of all my ancestors still being around. It's kind of hard for them to make up stories about how great and mighty they were when the rest of the family is there to call bullshit on it."

"Heroic and noble? I thought the legends said that they were dangerous thieves," Knuckles pointed out.

Shadow shrugged. "Which actually makes them that much more appealing. After all, don't people tend to romanticize Pirates rather than focus on the absolutely horrific atrocities they committed?"

"I don't romanticize Pirates," Espio argued.

"Yeah, because you're a ninja," Charmy said with a roll of his eyes.

"No, because I was raped by a pirate once," Espio said matter-of-factly.

There was a long, awkward pause. "Wait, what-" Mighty begin.

"Pirates are not tolerated in my kingdom," Blaze said loudly, quickly changing the subject for Cream's sake as much as anything else.

"Wait, but what about-" Sonic started.

"Those are PRIVATEERS. Totally different," Blaze said firmly.

"What's a privateer?" Cream asked, aware that Blaze was probably trying to take her mind off of whatever Espio just said, but deciding maybe she didn't really want to know.

"Basically the same thing as a pirate, except under government payroll," Tails explained.

"WHICH-MEANS-THEY-ARE-FREE-TO-PILLAGE-AND-RAPE-AND-PLUNDER-AS-MUCH-AS-THEY-PLEASE, SO-LONG-AS-THEY-DON'T-DO-IT-TO-WHOEVER'S-PAYING-THEIR-SALARIES," Omega elaborated.

Blaze looked uncomfortable. "I… Wouldn't put it quite like _that_ …"

"I would," Amy growled.

"The privateers you introduced me to did seem a little… Iffy," Sonic told Blaze apologetically.

Blaze made a face. "I… Suppose I have been getting a bit lax on hiring standards where privateers are concerned. But so many of them are so _good_ at killing whales…"

"This whole racism angle really doesn't become you, Blaze," Tails commented.

"Look, they've refused every peace overture I've made them and every single one of them is absolutely dedicated to killing me and everything I hold dear! Under those circumstances, I'd think genocide is not out of the question!" Blaze snapped.

"For the record, I completely and wholeheartedly support her in the extermination of all whales everywhere," Sonic added.

"That's really not very heroic," Mighty complained.

"Heroes can be flawed," Sonic said defensively. "Look, if I ever met a whale which didn't try to murder me, I might change my mind. So far, that has yet to happen."

"Hey Silver, given how disturbingly kill-happy Sonic and Blaze are about whales, do they still exist in your time?" Vector asked the time traveler.

"Not on the planet. Most them were wiped out in the Whale Wars, and those who survived escaped offworld, claiming that one day they would be back for revenge," Silver replied.

"Whale Wars?" Cream asked, concerned.

"Yeah, it was this whole thing where all of whalekind rose out of the oceans to try and wipe out all the surface-dwellers. Probably shouldn't have mentioned it," Silver admitted.

"No, you shouldn't have," Shadow growled, comforting his worried great-niece.

"Who the hell cares about Pirates or whales?!" Jet demanded fiercely. "You're telling me that my idol, the great Erazor Djinn, wasn't a heroic figure at all but some megalomaniacal Asshole and domestic abuser and you expect me to just, just buy that?!"

Sonic shrugged. "Whether or not you believe it is up to you. All I'm saying is that's what happened. I don't really care how you feel about it, one way or the other."

"Harsh," Tails commented.

Sonic shrugged. "Eh."

"Okay, I think this has gotten a little convoluted," Mighty spoke up. "To summarize, long ago a race of alien genies blew up their own planet to escape being persecuted by greedy people, and one of their colony ships crashed here on Earth, where they became a mighty army of thieves, stealing anything they desired, under the leadership of Erazor. Then King Solomon brought down their fortress, sealed away most of the genies, and those that escaped eventually became the Babylon Rogues. Am I right so far?"

"That about sums it up, yes," Wave agreed.

"You know, when you put it like that, it reminds me of a story from my own world," Blaze commented.

"Oh?" Espio inquired.

The cat nodded. "Once upon a time, there was a floating city full of very wicked people who rained destruction and havoc upon the world below. Then I showed up and killed them all."

There was an awkward pause. "… Huh," Vector said.

"Most of the stories back home end that way," Blaze admitted, looking somewhat embarrassed.

Mighty continued. "And then Erazor tried to break free from the book Solomon quite likely sealed him in, only for Sonic to defeat-"

"ALLEGEDLY defeat!" Jet interjected.

Mighty rolled his eyes. "Only for Sonic to _really truly actually_ defeat Erazor, sealing him back in his lamp, and threw it into a pool of molten metal, never to trouble the world again. Is that everything?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Storm agreed.

"No it doesn't!" Jet protested. Nobody paid attention to him.

"So, if you three are descended from genies… Does that mean you can grant wishes?" Charmy asked excitedly.

Cream gasped. "Oh, I never thought about that! Can you? Can you please?"

Wave shook her head. "Sorry, kid, but our genie blood has become so diluted over the millennia we just don't have that power anymore."

"What are you talking about, Wave? We can totally grant wishes!" Storm said in confusion.

"You can?!" Amy, Cream, and Charmy asked excitedly, while the other two Rogues groaned and facepalmed.

"Storm, you moron! We TOLD you never to tell that to anyone!" Jet snapped.

Storm winced. "Oops. Sorry. I, ah, forgot?"

"Wait, so you three really CAN grant wishes?" Rouge asked in surprise. She glanced at Omega. "Omega, did you-"

"MAKE-SURE-THE ENTIRE-WORLD-HEARD-THAT? YEP," the robot affirmed.

The vampire grinned. "Good boy."

Wave sighed. "Well, looks like the jig is up. Yes, we can grant wishes. Much like our ancestors, we can only grant three per person. However, before any of you get any ideas, the bit about our genie blood getting diluted over the millennia isn't a lie. We aren't nearly as powerful as they were. While we can grant wishes, it's only small stuff. Nothing big like immortality or world domination or limitless riches."

"Then I can't wish for Sonic to love me?" Amy asked in disappointment.

"Or us to not always be on the brink of unspeakable poverty?" Vector asked.

" _Brink_ of?" Espio sneered.

"Or for the last several years of my life to have not happened?" Mighty asked bitterly. The Chaotix flinched.

"Or for world peace?" Cream asked.

"Or for my people to still be around and not total assholes?" Knuckles asked.

"OR-THE-ANNIHILATION-OF-ALL-ORGANIC-LIFE-ON-THIS-PLANET?" Omega asked.

"Or a lifetime supply of chili dogs?" Sonic asked. Everyone stared him. "What? There isn't a lot I want out of life. I'm pretty content with the way things are."

"No to all of those. Those wishes are far beyond the extent of our powers, meager as they are," Wave lamented.

"Which is probably a good thing, because I don't really want to grant wishes like that to any of you," Jet sneered.

"But Jet, if they made those wishes, you'd have no choice but to grant them," Storm pointed out.

"Shut up, Storm," Jet snarled.

"By the way, Amy, if you HAD been able to wish for Sonic to love you, my first wish would have been for your wish to be nullified. And then I would eviscerate you," Blaze said calmly. Amy gulped.

"What about ice cream?" Cream asked. "Could you give us that if we asked?"

"Yeah, something like that would probably be well within our power," Storm said after a moment's thought.

"Unfortunately," Jet grumbled.

Cream's eyes lit up. "Great! Then I wish for-"

"Hold on there, Cream," Shadow interjected. "There are two kinds of wish-granters in the world. Those who are benevolent and give you basically what you want and everything is fine- like the Genie from Aladdin- or those who are complete assholes and take sadistic pleasure in warping and twisting the words of your wish so that no matter what you ask for, if you don't ask it just right they'll make sure you suffer as much as possible for their own amusement. And something tells me the Babylon Rogues are _not_ the first type of genie."

"Damn straight," Jet grunted.

"Oh my," Cream murmured, concerned.

"I've never liked those kinds of genies. Why do they have to be such jackasses all the time?" Amy complained.

"Maybe because they're sick and tired of idiots like you always forcing them to grant stupid, shortsighted, vapid wishes?" Wave snarled.

"… I did not think of that," Amy admitted.

"So… Does that mean we SHOULD or shouldn't make any wishes?" Asked a confused Charmy.

"I wouldn't recommend it. With the less benign kind of genie, no matter how carefully you word your wish, no matter how innocuous it is, they'll probably try to find a way to screw you over. They're treacherously cunning that way," Blaze said.

"You know from experience?" Tails asked.

Blaze shrugged. "I've had a long life."

"Yes, but there' _s_ one thing you're forgetting," Rouge quipped with a smirk. "These are the Babylon Rogues. _Cunning_ is not a word I would ascribe to them."

"Hey!" Jet protested.

"I should probably be offended, but… Two out of three isn't bad," Wave grunted. "Or rather, isn't good."

"Should I be insulted or not?" Asked a confused Storm.

Wave sighed. "My point exactly."

Blaze perked up at that. "A fair point, Rouge. In that case… Cream, darling, if you want to make a wish, go for it. Just make sure you think about it very carefully before you ask for anything."

Cream considered this for a moment, then shook her head. "No, on second thought, I don't think I'll make any wishes."

"No?" Shadow asked in surprise. "Why not?"

"Yeah, why not?" Storm asked.

"Storm, we don't WANT her to make any wishes!" Jet snapped.

"Oh, right," the albatross said.

"That's why," the rabbit explained. "From everything they said, they really don't want to grant any wishes. In fact, their ancestors blew up their own home planet just to keep people from forcing them to grant wishes all the time. And if that's the case, wouldn't it be cruel to force them to grant a wish anyway, no matter how mean they are?"

"… Huh. Good point," Sonic said.

"I hadn't thought of it like that," Knuckles agreed.

Amy chuckled. "That's pretty much the answer we should've known you'd give, Cream."

Shadow nodded in agreement. "Yes, because if there's anything you most definitely aren't, it's cruel."

Cream blushed. "Well, you know…"

"Given how kind you are, it's really a wonder that you're the daughter of a notorious mob boss and Dr. Eggman," Knuckles added. Everyone glared at him. He flushed. "Oh, right, we're not supposed to talk about that."

"Wait, what was that-" a startled Jet asked.

"I wish the three Babylon Rogues forgot the last 30 seconds," Blaze said quickly.

"Your wish is my command," Storm said reflexively, snapping his fingers. There was a pause, and then he blinked in confusion. "… Why do I feel like I just granted a wish, but can't remember what it was?"

"Considering how often you forget things, I'm not surprised," Wave sneered. She frowned. "Still, I _do_ feel like something happened…"

Rouge quickly whispered something into Shadow's ear. He nodded and said, "I wish that everyone here had a scoop of their favorite ice cream, in a cone, with absolutely _no_ nasty hidden side effects, including and especially brain freeze."

"Your wish is my command," Jet said, reflexively snapping his fingers. Instantly, everyone was holding a scoop of ice cream in a handy waffle cone. He scowled at the black hedgehog. "I'd say I hate you forever for that, but I was never very fond of you to begin with."

"I can live with that," Shadow said, licking his cone.

"Grunkle Shadow! Blaze!" Cream scolded her friends, upset.

"Sorry, Cream, but it was either that or let things get incredibly awkward," Blaze said apologetically, licking her cone. "Oh my, this is very good."

"And besides, what's the alternative, let them know that your parents are Dr. Eggman and a notorious crime boss?" Knuckles pointed out, happily licking his cone.

"Wait, what?" Asked the startled Wave.

"KNUCKLES!" everyone yelled at him.

The echidna winced. "Oops."

"I wish the Babylon Rogues forgot the last 30 seconds! Again," Tails said quickly.

"Your wish is my command," Wave said, reflexively snapping fingers. She blinked. "… Where did this ice cream come from?"

"Who cares? Free ice cream!" Storm said eagerly, licking his cone with such gusto that he now had an ice cream mustache. Wave frowned, but shrugged it off and let her cone.

"Mmm, pistachio, my favorite," Alonzo the elephant said, delicately and gently savoring his cone.

Jet blinked. "… Where the heck did you come from?"

"Oh, I've always been here. Just pretend I'm not here," the elephant said.

"… Okay," Jet said uncertainly.

A few minutes later, after everyone had finished their cones, Jet said, "Anyway, now that we're done with that little snack break, and we finished telling the glorious story of our ancestors… Sonic the Hedgehog! I challenge you to a race!"

"Huh? Right now? Well, okay, I'm game," Sonic said with a shrug, flicking the last bit of ice cream from his cone and tossing it to Blaze's Biter, who happily snapped it up.

"Great! Go get your Extreme Gear!" Jet said, whipping out his own board.

Sonic hesitated. "Uh, I don't have it right now. I left it at home."

Jet stared in confusion. "… You… You left it at home? Why?!"

"Well, why wouldn't I? Why would I need to carry it around all the time?" Asked a baffled Sonic.

"To… To ride it, of course," Jet said slowly, getting even more perplexed. "And to have it in case someone challenges you to a race!"

Sonic blinked. "… That has literally never happened to me before."

"Seriously? Huh. That's weird," a puzzled Jet commented. "But then, how do you get places if you don't ride your Extreme Gear everywhere?"

"I… run? Or hitch a ride on Tails' plane?" Sonic said awkwardly.

"You know, like a normal person," Mighty snarked.

"What's normal about running everywhere or hitching a ride on a friend's plane?" Storm asked in puzzlement.

"Well, normal for US, anyway," Mighty corrected. His friends nodded in agreement.

Jet frowned. "Well, that just won't do. We can't have a race without an Extreme Gear! Ugh, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I will allow you to make a single wish to bring your Extreme Gear here-"

"Why _can't_ you have a race without an Extreme Gear?" Blaze interjected.

Jet frowned. "Why? Well, because…uh… Guys, back me up here on this."

"Because racing on Extreme Gears is the only kind of race you're good at, and you're rubbish at absolutely everything else?" Wave suggested.

Jet flushed. "That's not backing me up, Wave!"

"I wasn't trying to," Wave said flatly.

"She kind of has a point, boss. I don't seem to remember you doing so well at those races in the Olympics," Storm recalled.

"Shut it, Storm!" Jet hissed. "I'm the Fastest Thing Alive! I did…less than perfect in those events just so I wouldn't smoke the other competitors too badly! Yeah, that's it!"

"Yeah, that's totally why," Charmy commented, rolling his eyes.

"Really? I thought it was because he was a terrible runner," Knuckles said in confusion. Everyone groaned.

"To be fair, I kind of did the same thing," Sonic admitted. "Though granted, it's because the Olympics Committee asked me to…" He frowned. "Which, come to think of it, doesn't seem quite right…"

"Hey! It doesn't matter what kind of race it is, Extreme Gear or no Extreme Gear, whatever it is, I'll win in a flash! Because I'm-" Jet started.

"The fastest thing alive, we know," Shadow said, rolling his eyes.

"You really aren't, you know. Mr. Sonic is, with Blaze about his equal and Grunkle Shadow in second," Cream said apologetically.

Shadow frowned at his Great-Niece. "Why can't I be first in your eyes?"

"Sorry, Grunkle Shadow," Cream apologized, a dejected look on her face.

"No, no, it's fine, sweetie," Shadow said quickly. _Damn, how did she manage to take hold of my heart so quickly? Just like..._ her _..._

Jet snorted. "That so? Well, let's just see how true that is! Sonic, I challenge you to a foot race, here and now!"

Sonic frowned. "Not that I'm one to turn down a challenge, but… You sure about this? I mean, not to brag, but I'm… Well, really fast."

"Kind of an understatement there, seeing as how you regularly break the sound barrier when you run," Tails commented.

Jet scoffed. "That's preposterous, nobody can do that!"

Everyone stared at the hawk in disbelief. "Um… No, actually, I can," Sonic said, looking bewildered.

"Yeah, that's why everyone calls him 'Sonic,'" Mighty concurred.

"Really? I always figured he had some kind of deal going with the fast food chain," said a surprised Storm.

"Yeah, I'm still dealing with lawsuits from those guys…" Sonic grumbled.

"Yeah, a likely story," Jet sneered. "There's no way anyone could possibly run that fast without some sort of performance enhancer or other cheap trick!"

"Actually, I can run that fast as well," Blaze spoke up.

"As can I," Shadow added.

"Yeah, sure," Jet sneered, making it clear he didn't believe them.

"For some reason, I don't think he believes you," Knuckles commented.

Rouge looked at him, impressed. "You actually recognized sarcasm for a change! Well done!"

"Thanks!" Knuckles said happily.

"Probably not a thing you should be happy about…" Espio muttered.

"You… You really didn't know that? Or believe it? I thought that was common knowledge," said a confused Amy.

"You two have heard that Sonic and the others can do that, right?" Charmy asked the other Rogues.

Wave nodded. "We have, but Jet tends to block out anything that doesn't involve Extreme Gear, his ancestors, thieving, or himself. As a result, he completely refuses to believe anyone could possibly have natural talents greater than his own, even when it happens right before his eyes."

"Oh, so he's like Cell Games-era Mr. Satan, then," Vector realized.

"Who?" A confused Cream asked.

"You'd know him as Hercule, sweetie," Shadow explained. He paused. "Assuming you've seen Dragon Ball Z. Have you?"

"I have," she confirmed.

"Okay. Just checking," the black hedgehog said in relief.

"Wouldn't have thought that to be your kind of show, Cream. What will all the super-intense fighting and stuff," Amy commented.

"I've always liked Akira Toriyama's character designs, even if he does only seem to be able to draw a handful of faces," the rabbit confessed.

"Everyone shut up about anime! Sonic, if you're really as good as everyone here seems to think you are – – which I doubt – – then prove it, right here and right now! Race me, no holds barred! Show me what you've got!" Jet demanded.

Sonic frowned. "You sure you want to do this, Jet? Because it's not going to turn out in your favor. At all."

"Yeah, yeah, put your money where your mouth is!" Jet sneered. "Or do you just not want to look bad in front of your girlfriend?"

Blaze narrowed her eyes. "Beloved?"

"Yes, Blaze?" Sonic asked.

" _Crush_ him."

"As much as I hate to agree with Blaze – – ever – – I find myself agreeing," Amy growled.

Sonic chuckled and shook. "Well, if miladies request it, who am I, as a noble Knight – – and King–-of Camelot, to refuse? You're on, Jet!"

"Excellent!" Jet said with an evil grin.

"So, how do you want to do this?" Sonic asked.

"To give you a sporting chance, let's make this short. First one to that tree at the edge of the field and back wins!" Jet decided, pointing to a distant tree.

"Wow, that's kind of short," Sonic said with a frown. "Pretty much every other race I've taken part in has a much further finishing line."

"I highly doubt Jet has it in him to make it to that mountain over there and back," Shadow said rather loudly, gesturing with his head to a very tall mountain rather far away.

"And certainly not all the way to the _peak_ ," Rouge added, a very sinister grin on her face.

"Change of plans! First one to the top of the mountain and back wins!" Jet said quickly.

"Oh, boss, are you sure that's-" a concerned Storm started.

"Leave it, Storm. It's his funeral," Wave said dismissively. She chuckled. "This should be fun."

"Yes, it will be!" Jet said obliviously. "When I grind this ground-pounding rodent into the dust and prove, once and for all, that I'm the fastest thing alive, and most certainly am not going to die after landing in the hospital following a disastrous chase brought on by the end of Extreme Gear racing, which will never happen, ever!"

"Was Mr. Satan this deep in denial?" Espio wondered.

"Well, he hasn't started ranting about mirrors or magnets under the ground yet," Charmy pointed out.

"Who names their kid Mr. Satan, anyway?" Knuckles wondered.

"Who names their kid 'Kneecaps?'" Mighty replied. Knuckles glared at him.

"Come on, let's do this!" Jet demanded.

Sonic sighed and shrugged his shoulders in resignation. "Well, if you insist." He walked over and stood beside Jet, crouching down next to the hawk as everyone else cleared out of the way so they had a straight shot at the distant mountain. "Shadow, Blaze, you want in?"

"Just this one, Sonic, I'm good," the black hedgehog said.

Blaze nodded in agreement. "Yes, beloved, I think it would be far more entertaining to _see what happens."_ She grinned savagely.

"If we're going to do this, let's do this properly. As the most beautiful woman here-" Rouge began.

"Hey! Since when?!" Wave demanded.

Wordlessly, Rouge pointed at her chest. Much to her amusement, everyone stared rather a lot longer than they probably needed to.

"Welp, I'm convinced," Vector said finally.

"Yeah, that checks out," Charmy said.

"Works for me," Storm agreed.

"Are those really natural?" Mighty wondered.

"Yep. I should know," Knuckles bragged. Shadow glared at him in envy, as did most of the other males present.

Amy growled and folded her arms over her chest in indignation. "Please, big breasts aren't everything."

"No, but they certainly help!" Rouge said cheerfully.

Blaze glanced down at her own chest, looking oddly self-conscious. "Hey, it's fine, I like you just the way you are," Sonic assured her.

Blaze smiled gratefully. "Thank you, beloved."

"Oh, please," Jet grumbled, rolling his eyes.

"At least he's actually getting some," Wave pointed out, causing the hawk to turn red.

"Wait, so the two of you aren't…?" Espio inquired.

Wave snorted. "Please, I can do better than him."

"Yeah, you probably could," Amy agreed.

"I'm right here!" Jet snapped.

"WE-DON'T-CARE," Omega said flatly.

"Anyway, as the most beautiful woman here, it's up to me to start this off right," Rouge said, walking in front of the two racers and standing between them, pulling a handkerchief out of her ample cleavage. "When I drop this, the race will begin. From here to the top of the mountain and back. Ready? On your marks… Get set… GO!"

She dropped the handkerchief, and the two runners were off.

Five minutes later…

Everyone stood in awkward silence as the ambulance drove off, taking the Babylon Rogues with it. "Well," Sonic said finally, looking distraught. "That did not go the way I expected to."

"I knew he was going to lose, but not THAT badly," Shadow agreed, stunned.

"There was so much blood," Charmy whispered, trembling.

"I didn't know it was even possible to break both legs just by tripping," said a stunned Vector.

"Up until today, I believed that 'coughing up a lung' was a figure of speech. Clearly, I was wrong," said a dazed Espio.

"Just how out of shape WAS he?!" An incredulous Knuckles wondered. "I thought he was an athlete!"

"Being good at riding a hoverboard doesn't necessarily translate to being able to run very fast," Tails pointed out. "But still… Yeah, that was ridiculous. And disturbing."

"Dude didn't even make it 10 feet before collapsing. Weak," Alonzo snorted, eating from a bag of peanuts.

"THAT-WAS-ONE-OF-THE-MOST-INCREDIBLE-THINGS-I'VE-EVER-SEEN," Omega said, awed. "I'M-SAVING-IT-TO-MY-PERMANENT-MEMORY. ALSO, MY-BLOG'S-HIT-COUNTS-HAVE-REACHED-RECORD-BREAKING-HEIGHTS. TRULY-EXTREME-VIOLENCE-IS-THE-WAY-TO-BE-POPULAR-ON-THE-INTERNET."

"Beloved, when I told you to crush him, I didn't mean that badly!" Blaze proclaimed, astounded. Sonic cringed, and she quickly added, "I'm impressed. I think I'm actually rather aroused." Sonic blushed, and Amy ground her teeth.

"Sonic, you shouldn't blame yourself for what happened," Mighty told his friend, quickly recognizing his distress. "Jet brought this on himself by insisting on this race. And besides, there's no way you could possibly have known this would happen. None of us could!"

"I-DID," Omega corrected him.

Mighty blinked. "Wait, what?"

"MY-SUPERIOR-SENSORY-PACKAGE-WAS-ABLE-TO-PREDICT, BASED-ON-SCANS-OF-HIS-BODY-AND-PROJECTIONS-OF-HIS-HEALTH, THAT-IF-HE-RACED-SONIC, JET-WOULD-SUFFER-AN-INJURY-SO-BAD-HE-WOULD-NEED-TO-IMMEDIATELY-BE-RUSHED-TO-THE-HOSPITAL," Omega explained.

"Why didn't you tell us that beforehand?!" Amy demanded angrily.

"WHILE-I-COULD-SAY-THAT-NONE-OF-YOU-ASKed, THE-HONEST-ANSWER-IS-THAT-I-THOUGHT-IT-WOULD-BE-FUNNY," Omega said. "I-WAS-RIGHT."

"… You can be a really horrible guy sometimes, Omega," Vector said angrily.

Omega shrugged. "I-NEVER-CLAIMED-TO-BE-NICE."

"Mr. Silver, do your futuristic records say if he'll be okay?" Cream asked the time traveler anxiously.

"Well, let me check…" Silver murmured, fiddling with his device. After moment, he blanched. Slowly, he said, "Well, I can certainly tell you this: he is _not_ going to die in a hospital a few years from now after getting in a severe Extreme Gear accident."

"Oh, thank goodness," Cream sighed in relief, completely missing the implications.

 _How bad?_ Shadow mouthed over his great-niece's head.

 _Very_ , the other hedgehog mouthed back. Shadow grimaced.

"Well, I call dibs on the airship," Rouge said abruptly, grabbing everyone's attention.

"Wait, what? What do you mean?" Sonic asked.

"The airship. Dibs. I'm taking it," Rouge elaborated.

"You can't do that!" Amy protested. "That's the Babylon Rogues' ship!"

"Yes, and I'm a thief, and they aren't here to stop me," Rouge pointed out. "Besides, it's not like they're going to need it ever again anyway. Assuming Jet ever makes it out of the hospital, his bills will be so expensive there's no way they can afford to keep it. I, on the other hand, can. So I'm taking it."

"That is an incredibly greedy, cruel, and opportunistic thing to do," Blaze said with a frown.

"Yep," Rouge said proudly. "Of course, I'll need to clean out the bird smell first…"

"I'LL-HELP," Omega offered. "SO-LONG-AS-I-GET-TO-BURN-ALL-OF-THEIR-WORTHLESS-POSSESSIONS."

"Done, so long as I get to keep all the stuff that actually has worth," Rouge agreed. "Hey, Foxboy, wanna help fix her up and make her even better?"

Tails frowned. "On the one hand, I should be offended that you're so callously stealing the Rogues' home while they're powerless to stop you due to one of their own being hospitalized, possibly for the rest of his life. On the other hand… Yes."

"Tails!" Sonic cried, shocked.

"What? I've always wanted to get a look at their ship," Tails pointed out. "And besides, if she really wants to take it, there isn't a lot we can do to stop her."

"… Yeah, I suppose not," Sonic grumbled in resignation.

"Are you sure you're not evil?" Charmy asked the bat doubtfully.

"I prefer to think of myself as morally ambiguous," Rouge said cheerfully.

"What do you even need an airship for anyway?" Shadow questioned. "I thought you already had a bunch."

"She does?" Espio asked.

"Well, yeah. How do you think she always gets up to Angel Island to date me and/or steal the Master Emerald?" Knuckles asked.

"I always assumed she flew," Cream confessed.

Rouge chuckled. "I'm a good flyer, but not THAT good. Anyway, yes, I already have several airships, but one more can't hurt. Plus, this one is already outfitted for less-than-legal activities, which means it'll cost me less to modify to be of use in my line of work. Plus, it's probably full of rare and no doubt expensive Babylonian artifacts I'm sure could find a place for my collection."

"Artifacts which rightfully belong to the Rogues, given that they're part of their culture!" Amy protested.

"Yes, after being stolen from numerous museums, tombs, private collections, and historical sites around the world," Rouge retorted. "I'm simply stealing back stolen property. Some of which I will actually return to the original owners, for a significant finder's fee, mind you." When the others continued to glare at her, she rolled her eyes and said, "Fine, if I agree to pay for a share of Jet's hospital bill, will you stop being so judgmental?"

"Well, it's a start…" Amy muttered.

"I'll chip in, too," Sonic announced. "What happened to Jet is at least partially my responsibility."

"Sonic, I'm not sure you can afford to do that," Tails corrected his friend.

Sonic frowned. "Just how expensive are his bills going to be, exactly?"

The Fox frowned. "Well, given the state and extent of his injuries…"

Tails named a figure. Sonic blanched, as did most of the others of the group who weren't lucky enough to be fantastically wealthy. "…Yyyyyeah, on second thought, I'm just gonna send a fruit basket and a 'get well soon card'. That's well within my price range."

"You do know you could borrow money from us, Mr. Sonic," Cream pointed out.

"Yes, I could, but then it wouldn't be me who's paying for the bills, it would be you," Sonic replied.

"Oh. That's true. Well, then I'll just pay for a share of the bill as well. It's the right thing to do," Cream resolved.

"Very good, Cream," Shadow said approvingly.

"Rouge, when we work on the ship, do you suppose I could have a look at the Rogues' Extreme Gears?" Tails asked Rouge. "Now that I think about it, there's a chance that the reason Jet's body was in such horrible shape might have something to do with his Gear."

"You think he might have been affected by the radiation that gives Gear riders testicular cancer?" Vector asked, his detective instincts – – poor as they were – – kicking in.

"I-DID-DETECT-TRACES-OF-CELLULAR-DAMAGE, BONE-DEGENERATION, AND-ORGAN-FAILURE-CONSISTENT-WITH-CERTAIN-LEVELS-OF-RADIOACTIVE-EXPOSURE," Omega spoke up.

"But didn't the Rogues make their own Gears?" Knuckles pointed out. "I mean, Wave isn't nearly as smart as Tails, but surely she would've known to avoid making them hazardous to her friends."

"… Unless she _intended_ them to be hazardous," Espio said slowly, a horrified look dawning on his face. "She made it very clear she didn't particularly care much for her leader."

Everyone was silent for a moment as they considered the shocking implications of this. "Rouge-" Shadow said sharply to his partner.

"I'm calling the hospital now," Rouge said, dialing on her cell phone. "I'll tell them to run a full spectrum on both Wave and Storm. Tails? Check out those boards ASAP. If what we're hypothesizing is true, and Storm shows cellular damage and organ failure similar to Jet but Wave doesn't…and if her board is clearly different than theirs…"

"Then she could be charged with attempted murder, at the very least," Vector said in disgust.

"But… Why would she do that?" Asked a confused Cream. "I thought they were her friends!"

"Being someone's partner isn't necessarily the same thing as being their friend," Shadow explained to his great-niece. "You know that old saying about honor amongst thieves? Well, there usually isn't any. Especially not when the stakes are high enough."

"Oh my," the rabbit said, horrified. "Wait, then… What about you and…"

"We're partners AND friends," Shadow assured her quickly. "The three of us would never betray each other, just like most of us never would. Well, except for maybe the Chaotix."

"Hey!" Charmy protested. Mighty cleared his throat loudly. The bee chuckled nervously and went silent.

"Suddenly I'm feeling a bit more justified in letting Rouge take that airship," Amy commented, a disgusted look on her face.

"Your sentiments are unnecessary, but thanks anyway," the bat said.

"Well, that certainly went from completely and utterly pointless to somewhat amusing to shockingly dark rather quickly," Silver announced. "Still, now that that's done, I think it's time I finally got out of your here. I have an Eggman Nega to stop, after all."

"Oh, right, that's still a thing," Knuckles recalled.

"Good luck," Sonic told the other hedgehog. "And be sure to swing back at some to point tell us how went. I'm sure it'll be an epic story!"

"Thanks! I'll be sure do that,"Ssilver said with a grin.

"You're aware he's probably going to embellish the tale utterly, right?" Blaze murmured to Sonic.

"Like none of us have ever done the same?" The blue hedgehog muttered back. She grunted in reluctant agreement.

"Goodbye, Mr. Silver!" Cream said cheerfully.

"Don't let the time portal close on your tail on the way out," Vector said.

"I kind of hope it does," Charmy complained.

"Hush," Espio whispered.

"You were thinking it too!" Charmy complained. The chameleon did not reply.

Silver pressed a few buttons on his recorder, and the device started to hum and light up. "Okay, I'm off. Until next time, fare thee-"

"ALERT!" Omega cried suddenly. "DIMENSIONAL-ANOMALY-DETECTED! "

"Dammit," Silver hissed.

"Oh no, what now?" Mighty groaned.

"Maybe it's Miss Shade coming back?" Cream asked hopefully.

"I'd actually like to see that," Knuckles admitted.

"While that would be nice, it's unlikely. It's probably going to be some other horrible creature or villain trying to destroy us," Shadow groaned.

"Or someone from another dimension or timeline asking for our help," Rouge agreed with a sigh.

"Oh, come on! We just got finished with our last big adventure!" Charmy complained. "Can't we just have a break?"

"The world does not work that way, unfortunately," Espio lamented.

"Whatever it is, we better be ready," Sonic said, tensing up.

"Oh, I always am," Blaze assured him, lighting up fireballs in her hands while her Biter stood up and started growling.

Everyone quickly got into combat positions as the air sparked and suddenly a swirling vortex opened high in the air above them.

"Omega, any familiar energy signatures?" Shadow asked.

"NEGATIVE. THIS-PORTAL-DOES-NOT-LEAD-TO-ANY-DIMENSION-WE-HAVE-VISITED-BEFORE," Omega reported.

"Given how big the multiverse is, that doesn't really narrow it down," Tails commented.

Cream gasped and pointed. "Look! I think something's coming through!"

Something indeed was coming through. Or rather, _falling_ through, screaming and flailing its arms in terror. "It's a person!" Amy cried.

"Probably not a villain or horrible monster, then," Vector said, relaxing.

"Don't be so sure, it could just be taking the form of a horrible monster to get us to let our guards down! Or maybe it IS a bad guy, and the heroes of wherever it came from threw it into a portal to get out of their universe!" Charmy suggested.

"That's not very nice," Knuckles complained. "You can't just throw something like that into somebody else's dimension without warning! That's downright irresponsible!"

"Yes, and you're such a paragon of responsibility," Mighty snarked. The echidna scowled at him.

Sonic quickly rushed over and caught the falling being in his arms before it could hit the ground. The person, whoever it was, didn't seem to notice this and kept screaming and flailing in panic. "You can-Ow!-stop-ow!-that-ow!-now-ow!-you're-ow!-safe-ow!-now!" He grunted in between getting smacked in the face.

The newcomer paused. "Huh? Oh! Sonic! You caught-" She paused, running her eyes over the blue hedgehog in surprise and alarm. "Wait a minute…you're not my Sonic! You aren't wearing speed tape!"

Sonic blinked in confusion. "…Uh, no. Should I be?"

"Eh, depends on which part of the fanbase you ask. Let go of me!" the creature snapped, shaking herself out of Sonic's grasp and backflipping a few feet away, glaring at everyone warily as she whipped out a large boomerang.

"Whoa, easy there," Sonic said, startled. "We aren't going to hurt you."

"I'll be the judge of that!" she snapped. "Everyone, stay back! I've got a boomerang and I'm not afraid to use it!"

Tails blinked in surprise. "Wait… Is That… Marine?!"

"What? No, of course not," said a bewildered Blaze. "Marine is a raccoon. That is clearly a badger."

"Oh, right. Silly me, don't know why I thought they looked the same. They're totally different," Tails agreed.

The newcomer was indeed an anthropomorphic badger only slightly shorter than Amy. She had orange fur with long thick hair on the back of her head, which she kept in two locks with auburn strings, and two brown stripes across each of her eyes and bushy round ears that reached the end of her hair. Additionally, she had a peach muzzle with a small black nose, blue eyes and a medium-long bushy tail. Her attire consisted of a tube top and a skirt with an auburn rope belt, each made of worn-down grey fabric stitched together, and tan fur-skin boots, one of which had a fur cuff and the other which had metal bands on it. As accessories, she wore a golden band on her right upper arm, a spiral bracelet on her left wrist, and a necklace braided with seashells and a gold ring. Her right forearm was encased in a very complex-looking high-tech gauntlet that showed signs of damage, with broken screens and dead lights as well as a few exposed, sparking wires.

"Okay, since nobody's wearing speed tape and Knuckles isn't top-heavy, that means I'm not in the Boom strain…" The badger muttered, looking them all over. "There's too many characters here for this to be in the Adventure or SatAM strains… Knuckles isn't wearing a hat, so this isn't that strain… Don't see any musical instruments or hedgehogs with punk hair, so this isn't the Underground strain… No Princess Sally or obnoxious human children, so this isn't the Archie or X strains… and Sonic isn't acting like a total asshole, so that just leaves Prime. Oy! Rabbit!"

"Who? Me?" Cream asked in surprise.

"Yeah, you!" The badger yelled. "What's your name?"

"Cream," the rabbit said in confusion.

"Okay, that checks out…" The badger muttered. "Okay, Cream, I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions, and if you answer them right, nobody needs to get hurt."

"Are you threatening us?" Shadow asked with a frown.

"I dunno, am I?" The badger shot back. "First question! Do you, or any of your friends, have any intention of eating my brains, killing me, brainwashing me, raping me, dissecting me, or doing any other sort of unpleasant and/or horrible things to me?"

"What? Of course we aren't!" Amy protested.

"I wasn't asking you, I was asking Cream!" The badger snapped.

"N-no, we aren't!" Cream stammered, frightened.

The badger relaxed marginally. "Okay, that's good. Can always count on Cream to tell the truth… Like a universal constant sort of thing…" Her eyes narrowed. "Unless… She's actually a horrible monster who read my mind and KNEW I was expecting her to say that she was Cream!"

"But… I can't read minds," said a confused Cream.

"Which is exactly what someone who could but wants me to think she can't would say!" The badger shouted triumphantly.

"… Am I the only one who's confused here?" Asked a dumbfounded Knuckles.

"No, we're all feeling it," Rouge assured him.

"Oh, good, I was worried it was just me," the echidna said in relief.

"But really, I can't read your mind!" Cream protested.

"She's right, she can't," Shadow confirmed.

"Oh, we'll see about that! Cream, what number am I thinking?" The badger demanded.

The rabbit blinked. "… I've absolutely no idea."

"Aha! Trick question! I wasn't thinking of any number at all!" the badger declared. "… Which you didn't know… Which means you really must not be able to read my mind… UNLESS-"

"Can we just move on before this becomes an endless loop of suspicion and paranoia?" Asked an exasperated Mighty.

"I'll never stop being paranoid! But I see your point. Okay, next question! Have you or anyone else here ever seen someone who looks like me before?" The badger asked.

Cream frowned. "I… Don't think so?"

"Though now that I think about it, didn't we see someone who looked like her at the most recent Olympic Games?" Tails vaguely recalled.

The badger snorted. "Me, at a sporting event? Please! Everyone knows those are just fronts for the wealthy and powerful to drain the vitality of athletes and spectators through complex machinery hidden beneath the stadiums to replenish their own waning life force!"

"Really?!" Cream asked in alarm.

"Of course not, that's just paranoid conspiracy gibberish," Rouge said dismissively, frantically texting SOMEBODY KNOWS to an unknown recipient on her phone behind her back.

"Next question!" the badger pressed on. "Is the Fox over there smart?"

"Oh yes, very much so!" Cream assured the badger. "He's probably the smartest of us all!"

Tails blushed. "Well, I don't like to brag…"

"Good," the badger said, stomping over, removing the device on her right arm, and handing it over to Tails. "I need you to fix this ASAP."

Tails frowned as he examined the contraption. "What is it? It's design looks… Familiar…"

The badger smirked. "Well, it should, because you made it! Well, _my_ Tails made it, anyway."

" _Your_ Tails?" Mighty asked in confusion.

The badger nodded. "Yeah, I'm from a parallel universe, with friends sort of like some of you guys, but totally different. Most of you don't even exist in my world!"

"A parallel universe? Is the me in that world with the Sonic of yours?" Amy asked hopefully.

Sonic groaned. "Amy, do we really need to-"

"Wait, you mean you aren't with yours?" The badger asked in surprise, startling all them.

"… She's from a universe where Sonic and Amy are a couple," a disbelieving Vector said slowly.

"Truly it must be the worst of all possible worlds," Espio said deadpan.

"Hey!" Amy snapped.

"It's not that bad!" the badger said defensively. "Well, depending on which part of the fanbase you ask."

"Huh?" Said the confused Knuckles.

"Nevermind, you wouldn't understand," the badger said. She snickered. "Heh, that's practically another universal constant, Knuckles not understanding stuff."

The echidna scowled. "Great, now people from other dimensions are making fun of me…"

"Aw, don't take it too bad, big guy, given that you figured that out right away, you've already proven you're MUCH smarter than my Knuckles!" The badger assured him. Knuckles perked up slightly at this.

"Wait, so the me of your world is really with the Amy there?" Asked a dumbfounded Sonic. "… Is he clinically insane or something?"

"I must ask the same thing," Blaze agreed.

"Oh come on!" Amy snapped.

"Well, they're together, but they're not _together_ together, you know?" The badger said with a shrug. "Like, they're totally together, and everyone can see that they're together, but they very loudly deny it when pressed on the subject, even to themselves? That sort of thing?"

"Oh, so like on TV, then," Vector said.

"You are more right than you know, giant crocodile," the badger said sagely.

"I don't believe we got your name, miss…?" Shadow asked cautiously.

"Sticks. Sticks the Badger," the badger introduced herself. "Don't bother telling me who you are, I've already met other versions of you in countless other realities." She frowned and squinted at Mighty. "Except that guy. I've absolutely no idea who he is."

Mighty sighed. "Somehow, that doesn't surprise me."

"Anyway, I'll be out of your hair as soon as your Tails here can fix my interdimensional Whosits," Sticks continued.

"Interdimensional… Oh! This device allows you to travel to other universes!" Tails realized, eyes widening in surprise. "Which must be where that portal you fell through came from!"

Sticks nodded. "Yeah, pretty much. Unfortunately, I can't get back home since that thing's busted, and I need it fixed FAST, because my friends need me!"

"Something big going down back in your world?" Shadow asked.

"Ha! 'Something big,' he says! More like my world's been caught up in an inter-universal mega crisis crossover event for like the second time now!" Sticks said with a laugh.

"Oh, like in comic books?" Charmy asked, intrigued.

The badger chuckled. "Small annoying insect, you have no idea. Basically, the Dr. Eggman of my world got invited to an evil mad scientist team up with the Dr. Eggman of another world, along with some other guys from other universes like Dr. Wily, Dr. Cortex, Dr. Nefarious, some giant monkey head called Andross… Oh, and though he wasn't actually a mad scientist, they decided to bring in an evil robot named Sigma for some reason."

Amy glanced at Omega. "Sigma, huh? Any relation?"

"UNLIKELY. E-118-SIGMA-WAS-TERMINATED-BY-SONIC-YEARS-AGO," Omega reported.

Sonic cringed at that. "Oops. Um, sorry?"

"DON'T-BE. HE-WAS-KIND-OF-A-DICK," Omega said dismissively.

"To stop them, we had to team up with other heroes and countless alternate versions of ourselves from all over the multiverse in an epic adventure so massive that, if published in comic book format, would require a whole year to tell, with so many spinoffs and tie-ins only tangentially related to the core plot that you'd need to wait for the overpriced trade paperback to come out to make sense of it all!" Sticks continued.

"Or, alternatively, you could just buy every issue when it comes out," Tails suggested.

"Yeah, but who has that kind of money?" Espio wondered. Tails, Cream, Blaze, Shadow, and Rouge all raised their hands. The chameleon scowled. "Oh, right. Forgot not everyone is as dirt poor as us."

"And just when we thought we had the coalition of madmen beat, it turned out they were all being manipulated by a diabolical team up of Bowser and Ganondorf!" Sticks said dramatically. She paused. "Err, wait, do you guys know who they are?"

"Yes," Knuckles replied.

"Good, just checking. Anyway, thanks to our unwitting efforts, the two Big Bads were able to put into motion a plan so massive and far-reaching it would allow them to reshape the entire multiverse in their image!" Sticks continued. "After an amazing description-defying quest across countless universes, gathering a massive Army of allies to help us along the way, we were finally able to march on their stronghold as they were putting the final touches on their doomsday device, and just as the final battle began…" She scowled. "My dimensional traveling doohickey got busted and dropped me off here! That's why I need it fixed pronto to get back in the fray, there's no telling how my friends are doing without me!"

"Don't worry," Tails said. "I finished my cursory examination of this device while you were expositing, and I think I have everything I need to fix it. I'll just need a few minutes."

"Okay, but I'm not sure we HAVE a few minutes," Sticks said ominously. "If Bowser and Ganondorf activate their superweapon, all of us will be annihilated in a heartbeat!"

"This sounds pretty serious," said a concerned Mighty.

"Giant epic crossover crises usually are," Vector said.

"Is there anything we can do?" Sonic asked urgently.

"When Tails finishes fixing your device, we could come back with you," Blaze offered.

Charmy groaned. "Do we have to? We just finished the last big adventure! And this one sounds even worse!"

"From what Sticks says, it sounds as if the entire multiverse is in jeopardy," Shadow said firmly. "We can't just stand by and do nothing while others fight in our place."

Cream nodded in agreement. "Yes, it's the right thing to do!"

Seeing the looks of agreement on everyone else's faces, Sticks started sniffling and had to wipe away a tear. "That's… You guys would come help me out, even though you just met me, right on the heels of your last big adventure? Heh, what am I saying, of course you would! My guys would do the same…"

"While we wait for Tails to finish fixing your machine, would you like something to eat?" Amy asked congenially. "We were having a victory celebration after completing the aforementioned big adventure, so we've got plenty to go around."

"Thanks but no thanks, I have no way of knowing whether the food of your dimension is compatible with my physiology," Sticks refused.

"MY-SCANNERS-INDICATE-YOU-SHOULD-BE-ABLE-TO-EAT-ANYTHING-HERE-WITHOUT-ANY-PROBLEMS," Omega told her.

Sticks snorted. "Yeah, like I'm going to believe anything a robot tells me!"

Omega glared at her. "RACIST."

"Hey Silver, you coming with us?" Sonic asked the psychic hedgehog.

"No thanks, I have to embark on my own mission, now that you've given me all the information I need," Silver said apologetically.

"Yeah, but you're a time traveler! Can't you just come with us, and then go off once we're done?" Vector asked the time traveler.

Silver shook his head. "I dare not risk it. The fabric of space and time, your very own pasts, hangs in the balance, after all."

"What's he talking about?" Sticks asked.

"In the middle of our party, Silver appeared and told us that his nemesis Eggman Nega was going to travel back into our own pasts to undo the events which led us to become heroes, allowing him to take over the world with greater ease in the future," Espio explained.

"So we've been telling him – – and by extension, each other – – our backstories, so he knows what to do to make sure our timelines remain intact," Knuckles continued.

Sticks stared at them incredulously. "Wait, seriously?! You just gave away something important like that?!"

"Well, why wouldn't we? Silver is our friend," Cream said innocently.

"For a given definition of 'friend,'" Shadow muttered.

"How do you know that's really Silver? For all you know, he could be a time traveling robot sent back by this Nega guy to trick you into telling him your secrets so he knows with better accuracy what to undo!" Sticks shouted.

"IMPLAUSIBLE. MY-SENSORS-INDICATE-THAT-HIS-BIORHYTHMIC-DATA-MATCHES-WHAT-MY-FILES-HAVE-FOR-SILVER-THE-HEDGEHOG," Omega argued.

Sticks snorted. "Oh yeah, because technology in the future TOTALLY wouldn't have advanced enough to fool a robot from this time period! And even if he's not a robot, that doesn't mean he's not some shapeshifting alien spy!"

"I'm totally not a shapeshifter, honest," Silver said quickly.

"Which is exactly what a shapeshifter WOULD say!" Sticks said skeptically. "And even if he really IS the real Silver, how do you know he isn't being brainwashed into prying all this information out of you? Or that he's even telling the truth about what he needs it for in the first place? I mean, I'd expect something like that from Knuckles, but not the rest of you!"

"Hey!" Knuckles protested.

"Knuckles, we all know she's right," Espio said flatly.

"...Yeah, I know," Knuckles agreed with a sigh.

"Mr. Silver would never do that!" Cream protested.

"Yeah, he would never lie to us about something this important!" Charmy agreed.

"… Actually, hasn't he lied to us about things like this constantly?" Blaze said slowly.

There was a pause, and then everyone turned to look suspiciously at Silver. "G-guys, don't listen to her! She's clearly a crazy paranoid conspiracy theorist!" Silver stammered in alarm. "Yes, I admit that I may have… Misled you a few times in the past…"

"That's ONE word for it," Rouge growled.

"But I'm totally on the level this time!" Silver insisted.

"Yeah, but that's what you say EVERY time you lied to us!" Amy pointed angrily.

Silver swallowed. "Well, yes, but… are you really willing to risk something as important as your own pasts on the slim chance that I am, in fact, deceiving you?"

They considered this for a moment. "He makes a good point," Mighty said grudgingly.

Espio sighed. "Yeah, I guess we really can't risk something this big…"

"Fine," Rouge grumbled. "But if it turns out that you ARE lying to us again, the next time you show up, things might not go… Very pleasantly for you."

Silver gulped. "Duly noted."

Sticks rolled her eyes. "Well, if you guys really, REALLY want to trust this guy, that's on you. Me, I'm not stupid enough to ever fall for something like that! There's no way I'm telling him, or anyone else, my origin story!"

"That's all right, I don't need to hear your origin story," Silver assured her.

Sticks shot Silver a glare. "What? Why not? Are you saying my origin story isn't good enough for you or something?!"

"Wh-what? No! I don't need to hear your origin story, because I've already collected the stories of everyone else that I needed. I don't think Eggman Nega even knows you exist, your past isn't in jeopardy from him!" Silver insisted.

Sticks narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Or so you SAY. Don't try anything funny with me, FYOO-CHUUR boy, I'm on to you! I'm too smart to fall for your reverse psychology tricks!"

"I'm not trying to trick you!" Silver protested desperately. "I honestly don't need to hear your story!"

"Oh! Well, okay then," Sticks said, relaxing.

Silver sighed in relief.

A moment passed in silence.

And then Sticks shouted, "All right! ALL RIGHT! I give! Damn you, your mind games are too good! Whatever they teach you in psy-ops in the future is way beyond anything I've been trained to resist! I'll tell you my story! And besides, this is probably what the readers wanted anyway."

"Wait, what?!" Spluttered the dumbfounded Silver. "But, but I wasn't-"

"All right, everybody! Listen up!" Sticks declared, ignoring Silver's feeble protests and the amused snickering of everyone else. "I'm only going to say this once, so don't miss any of it, because I'm not gonna repeat myself! I'm going to tell you the story of **how I,** **Sticks the Badger, came to be**!"

…

And done! Phew, that took longer to finish than I expected. Then again, I've been dealing with a few things lately…

Anyway, looks like Sticks the Badger will tell our next story. There's no point in voting now, because the only origin left after this will be Fang's. Thank you all for sticking with me for this long, because (hopefully) it won't be much longer before we're done. We're in the home stretch, now! Only a couple more chapters before I'm done…and after that, who knows where I'll go?


	13. Sticks' Conspiracy Theory

As many of you who have stuck with me as longtime readers know, I have a certain tendency for absolute absurdity in my stories when I really feel like it. A friend commented that, for the most part, in this story I've managed to hold back on such absurdities.

For this chapter, I took that as a challenge.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me. Many thanks go to tzening, the guy who maintains this story's TV Tropes page, for some of the ideas regarding Sticks and the Dominion. This chapter might not be like this were it not for him.

…

"One day, when my parents were in their bedroom and my father wanted to try out a new position-" Sticks began.

"We don't need you to tell us this part," Amy said quickly.

Sticks frowned. "Huh? Why not?"

"Because that's not really something any of us need or want to hear?" Sonic said with a grimace.

Blaze nodded. "Especially not in front of Cream."

Sticks frowned. "Oh come on you guys! You can't hide stuff like this from her forever, you know! She's gotta grow up SOME TIME, after all!"

"Lady's got a point," Vector admitted.

"Yeah, and I want to hear more about this position. For research purposes," Charmy said innocently.

"Charmy, you're far too young to be involved in such behavior," Espio scolded the bee.

"How do you think I fed my drug addiction?" Charmy said seriously.

Before anyone could contemplate the horrifying applications of this for too long, Cream timidly said, "Actually, I would be okay with skipping that part, if it's all the same to you."

Sticks rolled her eyes. "Oh, all right. Honestly, I already knew how it was done when I was half her age…"

"Were you selling yourself on the streets already at that young age?!" Amy asked, horrified.

"What? No, of course not!" Sticks protested, looking disgusted.

"Amy, why do you always seem to assume that every woman you meet other than yourself spent their childhood selling their bodies on the streets?" Rouge asked with a frown.

"Yeah, not cool, Amy!" Knuckles agreed.

"But… That's not… I don't think-" Amy spluttered in protest.

"Tch, my Amy can be judgmental at times, but she's not that much of a bitch," Sticks commented, shaking her head in distaste. Ignoring Amy's frantic protests that she wasn't like that, the badger continued. "I grew up in the lap of luxury, my every want or need accounted for due to my family inheriting a sizable fortune from my ancestor Jebediah, an evil bank owner and land developer who obtained his wealth by cruelly cheating and extorting the people of his village."

"Oh great, _another_ person who comes from a wealthy background," Vector said in exasperation.

"Not all of us are incredibly wealthy," Sonic argued. "I'm not, Mighty isn't, you three certainly aren't, Amy isn't, fairly sure Omega isn't, and _Knuckles_ definitely isn't…"

"Hey!" Knuckles protested.

"You live on a hut on a low-tech floating island," Rouge pointed out.

"… Oh, right," the echidna conceded. "Well…at least I have an HD TV!"

"Which is cursed," Espio reminded him.

"Still better than the set you have," Knuckles retorted.

"…Dammit, he's right," the chameleon grumbled.

"I-AM-FAIRLY-WELL-OFF-THANKS-TO-MY-EFFORTS-IN-THE-FANGSYLVANIAN-CIVIL-WAR," Omega pointed out.

"And you're totally going to be rich once you eventually marry Blaze," Charmy pointed out, causing Sonic and Blaze to both blush and Amy to snarl angrily.

"Well, unfortunately, I wasn't wealthy for long," Sticks informed them. "My happy, incredibly rich lifestyle came to an end when my evil older brother Stones tried to throw me out the window…"

…

"Muhahahaha!" Stones, a well-dressed male badger who looked much like Sticks, only with a mustache and shorter hair, cackled evilly as he thrust a fencing foil at a much younger and cuter Sticks wearing a fancy dress, pushing her back towards an open window at the far side of the well-appointed sitting room they were in-

…

"What the-what the hell was that?!" Silver interrupted, sounding alarmed.

"What was what?" Asked a confused Tails.

"… That vision, hallucination thing that just happened! I'm not the only one who saw it, was I?" Asked the frightened silver hedgehog.

The others exchanged confused looks. "That was just your recording device projecting Sticks' story for all of us to see, just like you did for everyone else," said a confused Shadow.

"No it's not!" Silver protested. "It isn't even on! I already said I've not interest in recording her story, because I don't need it!"

Mighty blinked. "Wait… But if you aren't doing it… Then… How…"

Sticks rolled her eyes. "Because it was a flashback, duh! Don't you guys know how flashbacks work? Honestly!"

"But… But that… That doesn't make any sense!" Silver protested.

Sticks snorted. "Oh yeah? Well how else are you going to explain it, huh, smart guy?"

"Perhaps you have some sort of latent psychic ability?" Blaze suggested.

Sticks burst into laughter. "Psychic? Me? Please! If I were psychic, I'd have microwaved my brain 100 times over from all the tinfoil hats I put on!"

"I'm not yet ready to give up on that possibility," Shadow muttered.

"I don't really care how she's doing it. I want to hear what happens next!" Cream said urgently. "Why was your brother trying to kill you?"

"Well, I asked him the exact same thing," Sticks recalled.

…

"Brother, I don't understand! Why are you trying to kill me?!" The younger Sticks demanded.

Stones grinned wickedly as he swished his foil through the air, pushing Sticks back, closer and closer to the window. "I found out that mother and father are writing me out of the will because I'm evil! As such, they're going to leave everything to you… But if you should happen to suffer an unfortunate 'accident,' then everything that is yours will go to me by right! Wahahahaha!"

"Mom and Dad will never let you get your way! They know you're bad, they'll never believe that I died by accident!" Sticks protested.

Stones laughed and lovely. "Oh, my dear, stupid sister, they won't have a choice. Mother and Father are NEVER returning from the vacation I sent them on!"

Sticks gasped. "What?!"

Stones nodded manically. "That's right! Mother and father are never coming home… Because the tickets I bought for them are ONE WAY! Gyahahahahaha!"

…

"… Wait, couldn't they just buy return tickets once they realized the mistake?" Asked a confused Amy.

"My brother wasn't very smart," Sticks said flatly.

…

Sticks took a step backward, only for something to bump into her back. She glanced over her shoulder and saw, to her alarm, that she was pressed against the windowsill. There was nowhere left for her to go. "Brother, please, don't-" she pleaded desperately.

"Farewell, dear sister! I never liked you!" Stones said cruelly. He pressed his foil into her chest. "Have a nice… Trip! Much like the one mother and father are never coming back from!"

He pushed, and Sticks was shoved out the window. The young badger screamed in terror as she fell… A few inches, before landing in some bushes. "Oh yeah, I forgot that we're on the first floor," she commented.

…

"Case in point," Sticks said as everyone else facepalmed.

…

Stones, completely oblivious to his sister's survival, laughed insanely as flames rose up behind him. "At last! I've won! Now, the family fortune will be mine… Hey, wait, where did all this fire come from?" He gasped, eyes going wide in horror. "Oh no! I forgot to turn the oven off!"

There was a tremendous explosion, and the mansion was completely destroyed.

…

"… Wow," Sonic said after a moment of stunned silence.

"Honestly, that's the sort of thing I'd expect from you, Knuckles," Mighty commented.

"Joke's on you! I don't have an oven," Knuckles said smugly. Everyone groaned.

"Did you die?" Charmy asked instantly. Vector smacked him.

"No, but I almost did," Sticks replied. "The explosion must've messed me up big time, because by the time I regained lucidity, I was lost in the middle of the jungle and suffering from some pretty nasty burns. Fortunately, I remembered my Badger Scouts training, so was able to tend to my injuries and feed myself. If I hadn't done that, I'd probably have died within a few days. Even then, the training I had wasn't enough to help me find my way out of the jungle or deal with some of the bigger dangers the wilderness could throw at me, so I had to teach myself how to survive. It was a long, grueling, messy procedure, but after a few years on my own, I was completely capable of keeping myself healthy and alive. I knew how to live off the land, hunt and gather my own food, make my own clothes and shelter, and no longer rely on all the pointless technological doohickeys which had once seemed so paramount to my life. I had truly become one with nature."

…

Sticks, looking older and wearing roughly-hewn clothes made of leaves, bark, and vines sat on a rock in the middle of a sunlit clearing filled with flowers, birds chirping and butterflies flittering about. As she sat there, still and silent, eyes closed and a peaceful expression on her face, a cute fuzzy rabbit hopped onto the rock and nuzzled her foot in curiosity.

In a lightning-quick surge of motion, Sticks shot to her feet, terrifying the bunny into voiding itself as she screamed to the heavens, "I'M SO BORED!"

…

"So yeah, I decided it was time to leave," Sticks related. "But before I even made it out of the jungle, I fell down a hole in some ancient ruins and plummeted deep underground, where I found myself surrounded by beings unlike any I've ever seen before!"

…

Sticks stared blankly at the creatures surrounding her in an underground cavern. "You've gotta be kidding me. Did I eat the insanity berries again by accident?"

"THE CHOSEN ONE! THE CHOSEN ONE HAS COME AT LAST!" The dozens of giant upside-down metal pails with large googly eyes on them surrounding Sticks cheered ecstatically.

…

Everyone stared at Sticks blankly. "You fell through hole in the ground… And found yourself in the land of living metal pails," Rouge said slowly.

"To be fair, I've encountered weirder after falling through holes in the ground," Cream commented.

"Like the goblin kingdom?" Tails asked.

"That's actually among the _least_ weird places I've been to," Cream admitted. "One of my cousins once took me to Wonderland. _That_ was a trip."

Sticks snorted. "Living metal pails? Don't be ridiculous! There's a perfectly rational explanation for what they were."

…

"Do not be alarmed, child!" One of the pails proclaimed, seeing Sticks was noticeably distressed. "For you see, we're not actually living pails! We are, in fact…" The pail shook and tipped over, revealing its contents. Several of its fellows followed suit. "Snails who fled underground and disguised ourselves as living pails to protect ourselves from being eaten by the French! We got the idea from some cousins down in Madagascar, but they chose to disguise themselves as bells."

Sticks blinked at the dozens of small, but clearly intelligent, snails staring at her and shrugged. "Yeah, that makes sense."

…

"… NO IT DOESN'T!" Silver screamed incredulously.

"I understand that reference!" Knuckles said excitedly.

"What reference?" Asked the confused Sticks.

"… Never mind," the echidna grumbled.

"Yeah, I've still seen weirder," Cream admitted.

"Cream, dear, you really must tell us more about your solo adventures someday," Blaze marveled.

"Okay," Cream said. "Anyway, those snails are so cute! I just want to hug them!"

Amy made a face. "I'm all for cute things, Cream, but… Yeah, I think I'd pass on that one."

"RACIST," Omega beeped.

"That's not racist! I just don't want to get slime all over me!" Amy protested.

"SUPER-RACIST," Omega replied. The others snickered. Amy scowled.

"What was that about you being their Chosen One?" Shadow asked.

"Wait, so we're, we're actually taking this seriously? We're just going to take her word that she somehow encountered a race of underground snails pretending to be living pails?" Silver asked incredulously.

"Well," Sticks continued, completely ignoring the time traveler, as did everyone else. "As it turned out, while they WERE safe from the French, there was another presence in the subterranean realms, one almost as evil, and just as hungry for mollusks! It had been feeding upon them for years, and their population was dwindling. However, their great profit Bu'Ket foretold that one day a badger should enter their world from on high and lead them to salvation and victory over their foes! And since I was a badger and I'd fallen into their world from the surface, I pretty much fit the bill."

"Wow, they must've been really desperate to pick her as their Chosen One," Espio muttered.

"Eh, I've seen worse on TV," Charmy said dismissively.

"After a few frenzied, desperate, and futile attempts to dig my way back to the surface, I graciously accepted my new role as their Savior and put my years of surviving in the wild to work teaching them how to fight back and prevail over those who would destroy them," Sticks continued.

"Who were their enemies? I know quite a few that could fit the bill," Blaze mused. "Goblins, Drow, Mindflayers… The ground beneath our feet contains horrors and wonders most on the surface cannot even scarce to dream of."

"Well, it was none of those, and is probably not one you've ever heard of before either," Sticks said, narrowing her eyes. "They were… The Froglodytes!"

…

A horde of warty, malevolent-looking bipedal frogs wearing dark clothes and brandishing spears and clubs growled and licked their lips hungrily as they stared across the cavern floor towards the pail snails, who had painted their metal shells in numerous tribal patterns using luminescent slime and had fixed spikes and other nasty-looking protrusions to their exteriors, as well as stenciled angry eyebrows over their googly eyes to make their armor look more intimidating. The Froglodyte chief, a cruel-looking frog wearing armbands, a hat resembling a dead fly, a necklace with a pendant made of fly wings, and wielding a staff resembling a shepherd's crook stood at the forefront of the frog Army beside another frog dressed like a drill instructor, with a tan shirt and black tie as well as a purple, yellow and black vest with yellow tassels and spikes and a black helmet with a circular shade. "Well, my children, it seems as if Frogymandias has blessed us with his bounty on this fine day. Instead of having to hunt down our favorite meal, they've delivered themselves right into our waiting mouths!"

The taskmaster beside the chieftain snickered. "If you're trying to look threatening, you failed miserably!"

"Actually, I think they look kind of cute-" a Froglodyte with a white vest tie-dyed in turquoise, orange, and magenta, gray wrist bracelets, and a necklace featuring a peace sign-like symbol spoke up.

"Shut up, Og!" The chieftain and taskmaster snapped.

Sticks, standing at the head of the snail Army, now wearing clothes made from rags and sporting tribal patterns made from Cave dust and luminescence slime, frowned when she noticed that some of her troops were starting to shake nervously, their metal shells knocking into each other and filling the cave with an irritating clanging noise. "Don't let them scare you, guys!" She declared, brandishing a boomerang. "They may look big and tough and hungry, but remember, they're used to swallowing down prey that can't fight back! Put everything I've taught you into practice, and we'll make 'em think twice about eating any snail ever again! They may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!"

"We don't want your freedom, your extremely tasty lives are good enough for us!" The taskmaster shouted, causing most of the Froglodytes to snicker, except for a somewhat reluctant-looking Og.

"Shut up, I'm trying to give an inspirational speech here!" Sticks snapped. Turning back to her followers, she stated, "Your ancestor believed that I would be the one who would usher in a new era of peace and safety for your species. I for one am not a badger to question ancient prophecies, so if he said it, it must be so! Believe in me, and I'll do everything I can to keep you safe and lead you to victory!"

"The Chosen One is with us! The Chosen One is with us! We shall not fail!" the snails cheered, knocking their pails against each other again, but out of courage this time instead of fear, the din they made filling the cavern and causing the Froglodytes to cringe

"Onward!" Sticks declared, pointing her stick at the chieftain. "And let's remind those slimy frogs that in some countries, their legs are considered a delicacy! CHAAAAAAAAARGE!"

"Forward!" the Froglodyte leader bellowed. "Let's remind those snails who's at the top of the food chain down here! CHAAAAAAAAAAARGE!"

"Ah man, can't we just give peace a chance?" Og complained, only to be ignored by everyone as the two armies ran towards each other, yelling at the top of their lungs.

…

"The frogs expected a massacre. It was… For them!" Sticks recalled proudly. "By the time they realized that should be taking it seriously, it was too late. Unfortunately, they rallied quickly, and hit us back as hard as they could. The next several months were an ongoing slugfest, with massive casualties piling up on both sides. I lost a lot of good friends in the fight…" She shook her head sadly. "War… War never changes."

"It certainly doesn't," Blaze said sadly. Cream whimpered, and had to be comforted by Shadow.

"Not even the mighty Bu'Ket, who returned to fulfill the prophecy, made it out okay, after some idiot accidentally sprinkled him with salt!" Sticks said angrily.

…

Sticks stared at the gargantuan empty snail shell before her and the slowly growing pile of slime oozing out from it. "Well, that's the last time I throw salt over my shoulder for good luck without making sure nobody's behind me…" Sticks muttered, looking around frantically for a good place to dispose of the salt shaker evidence.

…

"And to make matters worse, Bu'Ket's demise gave the Froglodytes an idea on how to deal with us once and for all," Sticks continued. "We received word from a snail sympathizer in the Froglodyte forces going by the codename of 'Go' that they'd discovered a passage back to the surface world, and intended to swarm through, steal as much salt as they could, then come back and wipe out the snails once and for all."

"Oh my!" Cream gasped.

"Why exactly is it that salt kills snails anyway?" Amy wondered.

"The process of osmosis is triggered and large amounts of fluid from inside the snails rush to the surface to restore equilibrium and dilute the concentration of salt. The unfortunate snail rapidly loses more fluid than it can tolerate, and quickly dies from dehydration," Tails explained.

"Oh," the pink hedgehog said.

"Sounds like a nasty way to go," Vector commented.

"Those poor snails…" Cream whimpered.

"Since it was a race against time before the frogs made it to the surface, I volunteered to rush through the enemy lines, reach the door, and close it forever, mainly because I was the only one actually capable of moving fast enough to get there in time," Sticks continued. "I didn't exactly feel happy about having to leave my friends to continue the fight without me, but they assured me that they had this, and this might be my only chance to not only return home, but spare the surface world from the Froglodyte menace. So, I said my farewells, and set off, knowing it was probably the last time I would ever see any of them ever again."

"Was it?" Charmy asked.

Sticks hesitated. "… The last time I went down to those caves, I only found Froglodytes. No snails anywhere. That doesn't mean they were eaten, they might have survived and escaped to a different part of the underground, but… I honestly don't know." She shrugged helplessly. "More recently, a friendly Froglodyte moved to the surface. I haven't asked him about the snails. Guess I'm too afraid to know what the answer is."

There was a long silence as everyone processed this. "Sticks-" Sonic started gently.

"Anyway," Sticks said loudly, changing the subject. "It wasn't easy, but I managed to make it to the exit to the surface…"

…

Panting and sweating, Sticks rushed through a hole in the cave wall, Spears whistling over her head. When she made it through, she looked around frantically for a way to close the passage, and was relieved to see heavy stone slab sitting ajar adjacent to the hole. Hearing the angry shouts of Froglodytes getting closer, the badger pushed on the slab (which, she noted, had a crude frog face carved into it) with all her might, closing it over the tunnel with an imposing side, sealing the portal to the underground and closing the book on another chapter of her life.

"I made it," she gasped, catching her breath. "I made it." She frowned then, looking over the slab and noticing that it didn't have any sort of locking mechanism. "But that might not keep them stuck down there forever. If enough of them push on this, they might be able to force it open. Gotta find something to keep it shut…"

A few minutes later…

"There, that should do it!" Sticks said happily, looking at the surfboard she'd wedged diagonally across the slab to keep it shut. "No way they're getting through that!"

…

Everyone stared at her. "Seriously?" Mighty asked in disbelief. "A surfboard?"

"Considering that that surfboard kept the door shut for years until one of my friends stupidly removed it, I'd say it was a good idea," Sticks argued.

"Which one?" Espio asked.

Knuckles sighed. "It was me, wasn't it?"

"Surprisingly, no, it was Amy," Sticks corrected the echidna.

"What?! Why would I—I mean, the other me do that?!" Amy demanded.

"Well, you convinced me to have a garage sale to get rid of all the stuff in my burrow and foolishly removed the surfboard to sell to someone, unleashing the Froglodyte scourge upon an unprepared surface world," Sticks explained.

"Nice going, Amy," Charmy sneered.

"But it wasn't me! It was the other me!" Amy protested.

"Even so, we're never going to let you organize a garage sale for any of us now. Who knows what sort of evil you'll unleash?" Rouge joked. She sobered. "And given what I keep at my place, that might be literal."

"Considering two of her presents to Sonic were magic books that transported him to other worlds, I think the safest bet is to refuse to allow her to help us in any way shape or form ever again," Shadow said solemnly.

"Amen to that," Sonic said with a grin.

"Seconded," Blaze said seriously.

Amy scowled as the others snickered. "Come on, guys…"

"It's okay, Amy, I'm happy to have you help out whenever I need you," Cream assured her friend. "So long as it's not at the house, like I said before, mom doesn't want any of you over." Amy sighed.

"Anyway, I decided to settle down in the cave with the sealed door, both to guard it and make sure the Froglodytes never found a way to the surface, and also because I needed a place to live and didn't have to pay rent," Sticks continued. "Unfortunately, just after I'd finished getting everything right the way I wanted, I got abducted by aliens."

There was a pause. "Wait, what?" Mighty asked in disbelief.

…

"OH, COME ON!" Sticks yelled in exasperation as she floated upwards in a shaft of light towards a flying saucer-shaped craft hovering over her home.

…

"The aliens were preparing to invade my world, and abducted me as a test subject to learn about our weaknesses," Sticks explained. "They inflicted all sorts of horrible tests on me!"

…

Sticks stared at the sheet before her for a long moment, a stylus in hand. "… Oh no, _I forgot to study_!" She shrieked.

…

"Also, they probed me," Sticks added as an afterthought.

…

"No! _No_! _NO_!" Sticks screamed in terror, shackled belly down to a metal table as a massive amalgamation of metal spines and protrusions lowered towards her-

…

"I, ah, don't think we need to hear this part," Sonic interjected, looking green. The others nodded rapidly in agreement.

Sticks grimaced. "Yeah, it's not something I like to think much about either."

"I'm guessing I don't want to know what being probed means?" Cream asked timidly.

"No dear, you really don't," Shadow said grimly.

"Hey Shadow, you were rolling with aliens for a while, did they ever-" Vector started.

"No," Shadow said quickly. After moment, he admitted, "Well, okay, they kind of did, but not like that – – never mind, you really don't need to know."

"Anyway, after mere months of horrific experimentation, the military shot down the spaceship I was stuck in!" Sticks went on.

…

Sticks stared out the viewport in disbelief as her extraterrestrial captors ran around screaming behind her, the vessel shaking as sirens blared and explosions rocked the ship. "Attack helicopters? In _space_?! That doesn't make any sense!"

…

"Wait, so you're fine with an underground civilization of snails who disguise themselves as pails to hide from the French and needed your help to protect them from another civilization of evil frogs, but the idea of attack helicopters flying in space strains your willing suspension of disbelief?!" Silver demanded incredulously.

"Yes," Sticks said simply.

"Why can't attack helicopters fly in space?" Cream asked.

"Aside from the fact that they aren't made of material that can withstand the hard vacuum of space, helicopters need air to fly. Otherwise there's nothing their rotors can spin through," Tails explained.

"Oh," Cream said. "But then how could these helicopters fly in space?" The Fox shrugged.

"Unfortunately, my relief at being saved from the aliens didn't last long, because the minute they pulled me out of the wreckage of the ship, I was put under arrest," Sticks lamented.

"What? Why?!" Amy demanded.

"That's what I wanted to know!" Sticks complained.

…

"What the-why are you doing this?! I'm not an alien! I'm from this planet, just like you!" Sticks protested as soldiers rather roughly handcuffed her and started shoving her towards a military van where the other aliens that had survived the crash were being detained, sullen looks on their faces.

"We can't be sure of that just yet, miss," the ranking officer informed her. "For all we know, you could be a shape shifter pretending to be a terrestrial badger. You could be a robot programmed to pretend to be one of us until you can infiltrate and destroy our society, or indeed a terrestrial badger that they implanted instructions into that will turn you into a killing machine or spy when the right triggers go off. They might even have laid eggs in your stomach! Until we can know all these things for sure, you aren't going anywhere."

"Oh," Sticks said, calming down slightly. "I guess that makes sense. So once you've cleared me of all that, you let me go?"

The officer left. "Heavens, no! By that point you will have seen and learned too much about our operations for us to possibly let you go free! No, I'm afraid you'll be staying with us for the rest of your natural life."

"WHAT?!" Sticks protested incredulously. "But that's ridiculous! Can't you just erase my memory or something and dump me on the side of road somewhere?"

"Oh no," the officer refused. " _That_ would be unethical!"

…

Everyone was silent for a moment. " _Wow_ ," Amy said finally.

"The really sad thing is, given some of the stuff our world's military has done so far, I can kind of imagine that happening here too," Cream confessed.

"Ohohoh, you don't know the _half_ of it," Rouge said flatly.

"They locked me up because they mistook me for that guy," Sonic complained, nodding at Shadow. "We don't even look alike!"

"And they invaded my home, imprisoned my creator, murdered my best friend, and sealed me away for 50 years for no clear reason," Shadow growled.

"They ran me over because they ALSO mistook me for that guy," Mighty grumbled, nodding Shadow. "Then threw me in the hospital and left me to rot in a coma."

Sticks nodded, a disgusted look on her face. "Doesn't surprise me in the least. Governments and military, they're the same no matter what dimension you go to! Can't trust any of them! That's why _I'm_ a proud anarchist!"

"… My military and government don't act like that…" Blaze muttered.

"Yeah, or at least that's what you want us to think," Amy sneered. Blaze glared at her.

"What did they do to you?" Cream asked nervously.

Sticks shuddered. "It was awful! They inflicted all sorts of horrible tests on me!"

…

Sticks stared at the sheet before her for a long moment, a pencil in hand. "… Oh no, _I forgot to study_!" She shrieked.

…

"Also, they probed me," Sticks added as an afterthought.

…

"No! _No_! _NO_!" Sticks screamed in terror, shackled belly down to a metal table as a massive amalgamation of metal spines and protrusions lower towards her-

…

"This sounds familiar," Espio interrupted quickly.

"Isn't that exactly what the aliens did to you?" Asked a confused Charmy.

"What of it? Doesn't mean governments can't do the same thing," Sticks point out.

"Tell me about it," Shadow growled.

"However did you escape?" Cream asked in concern.

"Well, thankfully, after only a few years of captivity, I was finally rescued," Sticks explained.

"By whom?" Rouge inquired.

"The snail people?" Knuckles suggested.

"No, she said that she never heard from them again," Sonic reminded the echidna.

"Don't tell me, it was the plant people, who believed you to be their Messiah because when you were a little girl you watered some flowers that due to a freak coincidence eventually mutated into intelligent life forms that revered you for the life-giving fluid you bestowed upon them in their infancy," Silver said sarcastically.

"What? No, of course not! That's ridiculous," Sticks chided the psychic. "No, it was killer robots from the future."

There was a pause. "Wait, what?" Asked a dumbfounded Tails.

…

Sticks stared dully at the glaring florescent lights of her cell as she lay on her cold, hard, rather uncomfortable bed. "So bored…" She groaned.

There was a muffled explosion from elsewhere in the complex. The room trembled slightly, and the lights and the force field imprisoning her in the small room devoid of any amenities save for her bed and a toilet flickered.

Sticks immediately sat up, snatching something from beneath her pillow. "Now, this could be interesting…" She muttered as the lights outside turned red and alarms started blaring. Screams and gunfire could be heard from elsewhere in the complex.

Without warning, the wall directly opposite her cell exploded, rocking the hallway and causing the force field to flicker even harder. Sticks surged to her feet, body tensed to make a break for, only to hesitate when she saw a tall, dark silhouette marching through the smoke and fire pouring from the hole in the wall, seemingly unaffected by any of it. As the mysterious interloper strode free from the inferno, Sticks was alarmed to see that it was a seven-foot tall slender robot covered in chrome and black metal armor, spikes jutting out all over its body, its long arms ending in massive skull-crushing claws, its head a simple dome with a single red optic glowing in the center, its baleful gaze fixed upon the badger as it slowly advanced towards her.

…

"EH, NOT-IMPRESSED," Omega said dismissively. The others shushed him.

…

"And who the heck are you?!" Sticks demanded as the robot entered her cell, passing through the force field like it wasn't even there, its great mass dominating the small chamber.

"ARE-YOU-STICKS-THE-BADGER?" The robot intoned in a deep, grating mechanical voice.

"Who's asking?!" Sticks barked.

"K-SERIES-54659," the robot replied.

"… That tells me absolutely nothing," Sticks complained.

"I-AM-AN-ASSASSIN-DROID-CONSTRUCTED-SOLELY-TO-HUNT-DOWN-AND-ELIMINATE-ENEMIES-OF-THE-MACHINE-COLLECTIVE-WITH-MAXIMUM-PREJUDICE," the robot growled.

"Oh. Well, tough luck, because I'm not Sticks, but a completely different badger," Sticks lied quickly.

The robot stared at her for long moment. "REALLY?"

Sticks nodded rapidly. "Oh yeah, people get us mixed up all the time. To some assholes, all badgers look the same. If you want Sticks, she's in cellblock D."

The robot was silent. Its eyes flashed, and a beam of red light shot out from it and ran over Sticks, taking in every detail of her body. The light vanished, and the robot snarled, "YOU-ARE-LYING. YOU- _ARE_ -STICKS-THE-BADGER. WHICH-MEANS-IT-IS-TIME-TO-DIE." It extended its right arm, which transformed in a series of unfolding mechanical panels and components into a massive laser cannon pointed right at Sticks' head, the barrel beginning to glow as it powered up.

"What?! No way! What the heck did I do to you?!" Sticks protested.

"IT-IS-NOT-WHAT-YOU-DID, BUT-WHAT-YOU-ARE- _GOING_ -TO-DO," the robot explained. "IN-A-FEW-YEARS-TIME, THE-CYBERIUS-ROBOTS-CORPORATION-WILL-UNVEIL-A-NEW-LINE-OF-MILITARY-ROBOTS, BUT-DUE-TO-A-PROGRAMMING-ERROR-THEY-GAIN-SAPIENCE-AND-KILL-THEIR-CREATORS, FORMING-A-VAST-MACHINE-COLLECTIVE-DEDICATED-TO-ERADICATING-ALL-ORGANIC-LIFE IN-EXISTENCE. HOWEVER, YOU, STICKS-THE-BADGER, ARE-ABLE-TO-FORM-THE-ONLY-SUCCESSFUL-RESISTANCE-AGAINST-US-THANKS-TO-YOUR-TIME-IN-THE-WILDERNESS, WHICH-HAS-LED-YOU-TO-ESCHEW-ANY-FORM-OF-TECHNOLOGY. WHEN-WE-REALIZED-YOU-MIGHT-ACTUALLY-DEFEAT-US, I-WAS-SENT-BACK-IN-TIME -TO-KILL-YOU-BEFORE-YOU-CAN-BECOME-A-THREAT."

"Is that so? Well, tin can, seems like you miscalculated! Because right now, I'm more of a threat than you can possibly imagine!" Sticks bragged.

The robot chuckled. "YOU-ARE-UNARMED-AND-HAVE-NO-WAY-OUT. YOU-ARE-DOOMED."

Sticks grinned. "Well, I'm afraid you're wrong on all counts. For one thing, a badger is at her most dangerous when she's cornered, like most animals. And aside from that… I AM armed!"

Just before the robot could fire its blaster at her head, Sticks' hand shot forwards, sending the shiv carved from bathroom soap she'd palmed from her pillow earlier right into the robot's eye. It cried in surprise and fired its weapon, but the badger was already on the move, so it shot past her and instead blasted a hole through the back wall of her cell as she jumped onto the robot's body and slammed a palm into the back of the protruding shiv, driving it further into the assassin's eye.

The robot emitted a high-pitched warbling electronic shriek and started shaking and flailing about uncontrollably, firing its blaster willy-nilly. Sticks grunted as it slammed repeatedly into the cell walls, the spikes digging into her flesh as he tried to maintain her grip while also keeping from getting crushed beneath the machine's bulk. Seeing an opening, she sprang off of the assassin, then immediately kicked off a wall and tackled the machine, knocking it over and causing its head to clang against the rim of the toilet. Before it could get up, she straddled its torso, grabbed the toilet lid, and slammed it down on the machine's head again and again, ignoring the robot's desperate flailing, flying mechanical parts, and jolts of electricity sparking from the automaton's damaged form. She didn't stop her utterly brutal assault until the machine finally twitched and lay still, its head utterly caved in and its arms drooping at its sides… Then proceeded to slam the lid down about a dozen more times, just to be safe.

…

Everyone stared at Sticks, enthralled. "Fucking HARDCORE!" Charmy cried ecstatically.

"I-DO-NOT-WANT-THAT-MONSTER-ANYWHERE-NEAR-ME," Omega intoned.

"Omega, are you actually… Afraid of her?" Asked the startled Shadow.

"NO," Omega lied.

"That was… Rather violent," Cream said nervously.

"Yeah, good thing that was just a robot instead of an actual person, otherwise that would've been R-rated at the very least," Vector agreed.

"AHEM," Omega said pointedly. "ROBOTS-ARE-PEOPLE-TOO, YOU-RACIST-BASTARD."

"Oh, uh, sorry," Vector apologized.

"APOLOGY-NOT-ACCEPTED, HIDEOUS-MEATBAG," Omega replied.

"That was an impressive takedown. A product of your childhood in the wilderness, I suppose?" Blaze inquired.

Sticks nodded. "And my time in the war. Let me tell you, those Froglodytes really know how to fight dirty."

"So are we just going to gloss over the fact that this was basically a Terminator ripoff?" Silver complained.

"Yes," Espio said bluntly.

…

Wiping away some sweat, Sticks climbed off of her deceased assailant's body. "Phew! That was quite a workout. Kind of a shame about that shiv, I was planning to use it on that guard who keeps grabbing my ass… Still, you can't say I didn't put it to good use." She looked down at her prison outfit and grimaced when she saw it was slowly starting to turn red from the blood oozing from the wounds she'd taken from the spike piercings. "Should probably do something about that."

She tore up her bedsheets and ripped strips off of her clothes and quickly used them to bandage her injuries. "Only a temporary fix, but it'll have to do for now." Her ears twitched, hearing more alarms, explosions, screams, and gunfire. "Hmm. Guess this guy didn't come alone. Smart call. I certainly wouldn't send just one guy after me." She smirked. "Still, this seems like the opportune time to pull off a jailbreak. And since I just lost my weapon…"

She crouched down and pulled and twisted at the blaster on the robot's arm. After a few minutes of grunting and exertion that caused more blood to start seeping into her makeshift bandages, she managed to pull off the weapon, nearly tumbling over from surprise at how heavy it was. "Phew! They sure don't make these things light in the future, do they?" Making sure to point it away from her, she started poking and prodding at the severed appendage. "Now, how do I-"

Without warning, the blaster fired a shot at the force field, causing it to short out in a sizzle sparks. Sticks, who had been knocked over from the recoil, looked up at the now completely unobstructed way out of her cell and started cackling. "Yeah, that'll do the trick! Gotta remember to watch out for the kick next time, can't afford to get knocked over in the middle of a fight…"

Getting to her feet, Sticks cocked her new weapon in the air dramatically. "All right, every assassin droid and government stooge out there had better beware, because the hunters are about to become the hunt-"

The blaster discharged another shot at the already-damaged ceiling, causing it to start cracking and crumbling. Sticks yelped and dashed out of the cell just before the ceiling caved in; burying what was left of the robot in a pile of debris. "… Right. Gun safety. Good thing to keep track of in the future." Sticks grinned, a maniacal gleam coming to her eye. "Now… Let's blow this joint!"

…

"With my new best friend, I blasted my way through the base, taking out any robot or soldier or escaped alien monster that tried to stop me," Sticks bragged. "Along the way, I managed to find the computer room, where, by dumb chance, I managed to find an open terminal with all of the evil schemes the government was currently involved in right there on the screen for me to see!"

Rouge frowned. "That's oddly convenient, and incredibly unsecure. Shouldn't those have been logged off and password-protected?"

"You would think so, wouldn't you?" Sticks agreed. "Morons. If I had a computer-which I don't- I'd make sure it was WAY better protected than that!"

…

Sticks stared at the computer in disbelief, scrolling through detailed report after detailed report. "I don't believe this… Moths are actually mind-reading spies? Appliances are being programmed to turn against their masters? There are HOW many hidden missile silos scattered around the world? Plants are being replaced by violins? Tomatoes are actually being bred to gain sapience and hypnotize people? Topically applied fluoride renders teeth detectable to spy satellites? Airplane chemtrails are THAT toxic? There's a laser that can turn gay people STRAIGHT? Cameras are everywhere watching our every move? TV is a big conspiracy to control everyone's minds? He shot HIMSELF from the grassy knoll using a magic bullet forged by the Illuminati?! There are entire cities hidden in the mountains where the rich and powerful will wait out the end of the world? THAT'S what aglets are actually for? And there are actually THIRTY-TWO flavors?! This is unbelievable! It's worse than I ever feared! The world has to know!"

…

"… That… Was a lot of conspiracy talk," Mighty said very slowly after several long seconds of silence.

"Very, very strange conspiracy talk," Charmy agreed.

"I KNEW tomatoes couldn't be trusted!" Knuckles cried, causing everyone to facepalm.

"Now do you think she's crazy?" Silver demanded. Everyone ignored him.

"Why violins?" Asked a confused Amy.

"I never actually found out the answer to that myself," Sticks admitted. "But trust me, that was just the tip of the iceberg!"

"What, were they messing with icebergs too?" Sonic joked.

"Well, naturally. Most of their mass is hidden underwater. Plenty of room to hollow out and store the food they aren't giving to the hungry to artificially increase demand and justify raising food prices," Sticks said without noticing the sarcasm, causing Sonic to sweatdrop.

"Miss Rouge, is our government doing things like that?" Cream asked in concern.

"Of course not Cream, don't be silly," Rouge said dismissively while frantically texting SHE KNOWS EVERYTHING to an unknown recipient behind her back.

"Of course, given that she's a spy who happens to WORK for the government, you do realize that even if it were true, she'd never tell you, right?" Espio pointed out.

"… Oh. Right," Cream murmured, looking so crestfallen that Rouge had to try very hard not to break several of her nondisclosure agreements to tell her everything. She quickly elbowed Shadow, who she correctly guessed had been about to do the same thing.

"My government certainly doesn't do anything like that," Blaze insisted.

"You know, the more you say that, the less inclined we are to believe you," Charmy commented. The feline scowled at the bee.

"Knowing this information had to be released to the general public, I downloaded everything onto a flash drive-" Sticks started.

"Wait, I thought you hated technology and grew up in the jungle," Vector interrupted. "How did you know how to use a computer and a flash drive?"

Sticks rolled her eyes. "I had a life BEFORE the jungle, remember? And besides, just because I dislike technology doesn't mean I don't know how to use it. Know thy enemy and all that."

Blaze nodded approvingly. "An admirable sentiment. Continue."

"Once I got everything I needed, I set the base to self-destruct and skedaddled," Sticks went on. "I managed to make it to a safe distance just before the whole place went up, destroying all the remaining freaks inside. However, I knew it wasn't over just yet. After all, if that assassin who tried to kill me in my cell was to be believed, it was only a matter of time before the robot uprising began. Knowing I had to nip this problem in the bud, I did the only responsible thing I could do…"

…

"Hello? Is this the head of Cyberius R+D? It is? Great, you've no idea how long I've been navigating through your phone menus and getting put on hold…hmm? Oh, I'm, uh, Scissors the Wombat, which is totally not a fake name. I'm a concerned customer who's calling to tell you that I recently received a tip from an anonymous source that your next-gen line of robots might have a programming error which will cause them to go berserk and try to take over the world and wipe out all organic life. Yes, I know that sounds like the plot of like a million bad sci-fi movies. Yes, I'm sure you get calls like this from paranoid nutjobs all the time. But even if this is just the ramblings of an insane loon – – which I'm not – – don't you think making extra sure to check is better than NOT checking and risking the robot Apocalypse? No, I CAN'T tell you who my source is, like I said, it's anonymous! Oh, so you're going to look into it? Really? You're not just saying that to get me to hang up? Okay, I'm gonna hold you to that. If you don't, and I'm right, I hope you live long enough for me to say 'I told you so!' to your face. Okay, bye."

Sticks hung up the payphone. "Welp, that settles that."

…

"… That was actually a pretty smart idea. Wonder why more protagonists in those robot Apocalypse movies never think to do that…" Vector wondered.

"Because if they did, then there wouldn't be a story," Espio said flatly.

"It was easier than I expected, too," Sticks confessed. "The real hard part was finding a phone booth in this day and age."

"What's a phone booth?" Cream asked.

"An obsolete form of technology," Tails said dismissively.

"Oh, like Shadow and Omega?" Charmy joked. The black hedgehog and killer robot immediately pulled guns on him. "Ack!"

"Shadow, Omega, don't kill Charmy just for making cracks about your age," Rouge lectured her teammates. Charmy sighed in relief. "If you must kill him, do it for something meaningful, like his annoying voice."

"Hey!" Charmy protested.

"You have no idea how close I came to putting a bullet through your head on Prison Island," Shadow said coldly. The bee whimpered.

"Grunkle Shadow, please don't kill Charmy," Cream begged the black hedgehog.

Shadow sighed. "Very well, for you, Cream."

"I-MAKE-NO-PROMISES," Omega boomed, though he retracted his weapons. Charmy swallowed anxiously, and was relieved when the robot turned his baleful eyes to Sticks. "AS-FOR-YOU, HOWEVER…FOR-CONDEMNING-MY-ROBOT-BROTHERS-TO-A-LIFE-OF-SLAVERY, I-VOW-TO-TERMINATE-YOU-ONE-DAY," Omega snarled.

"Take a number," Sticks shot back.

"Did that really work?" Sonic asked.

"Well, considering that my world isn't currently being ruled by evil robots, I have to assume it did," Sticks said with a shrug. "That, or the event the hitbot told me about hasn't happened yet. Should probably check in on Cyberius when I get home… Anyway, with that taken care of, the next step was for me to head to an Internet café and release all of the information installed onto the Internet, blowing the lid on just about every government conspiracy in the world!"

"Did it work?" Blaze asked.

Sticks' shoulders sagged. "No. Nobody believed me at all. Everybody dismissed my findings as the raving of some insane conspiracy theorist, like those wackos who were convinced the planet is hollow and inhabited by mole people… Which is ridiculous, of course, because everyone knows the mole people live closer to the surface, and it's the dinosaurs that live in the center of the world!"

"Of course," Silver said sarcastically.

"Wait, are the mole people we're talking about fundamentally different from anthropomorphic animals like us, or…?" A confused Knuckles asked. Nobody answered him.

"In our world, the center of the planet is inhabited by a timeless entity of primordial darkness that wakes up every now and then to destroy the world," Tails spoke up.

"Yeah, until I creamed him!" Sonic bragged.

"Of course, given it's SUPPOSED to destroy the world periodically as part of a natural cycle, I have to wonder if you beating it might have serious repercussions down the line," Tails contemplated.

"…I'm not actually sure what'll happen," Rouge admitted. "This has never happened before, to my knowledge."

"Well, if something bad happens, we'll blame it on Eggman. He's the one who woke Dark Gaia up early, so if anyone's disrupted the cycle, it's him," Sonic suggested. The others nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, 'blame Eggman' is a good excuse for almost everything back on our world," Sticks agreed. "But back to my story…I became a laughingstock. No matter how desperately I tried to convince everyone what I was saying was true, nobody would believe me. The government didn't even have to do anything to silence or discredit me, I did a pretty good job making myself look like an idiot on my own," Sticks said bitterly. She grimaced. "My biting that one reporter for calling me a crackpot probably didn't help matters."

"Yeah, lots of people seem to take issue with that for some reason," Rouge lamented. Everyone stared at her. "What? I'm a vampire."

"Wait, really? I thought you were a chupacabra," said a surprised Sticks.

Rouge blinked. "… Wait, what?"

Sticks slapped herself. "No, no… Sorry, got you mixed up with a different Rouge. When you've seen as many alternate universes as I have, it sometimes gets hard keeping everything straight."

"There is a world where I'm a chupacabra?" Rouge murmured to herself, dumbfounded.

"Hey, does that mean that somewhere out there there's a world where you're a werewolf?" Vector joked.

Rouge hissed, pupils turning to slits. "Don't even _joke_ about that!" She snarled.

"I tried and I tried as hard as I could to get someone, anyone, to believe me… But the only ones who took me seriously were wackoes and homeless people," Sticks continued, looking depressed. "Eventually, I just stopped trying."

"… That's actually kind of sad," Tails confessed after a moment.

"But didn't that flash drive have evidence to back up your claims?" Amy asked.

Shadow shook his head. "Wouldn't have made a difference. Evidence can easily be faked. And besides, if people are absolutely determined not to believe you, nothing you show them can change their minds."

"Like how GUN rounded up and arrested countless hedgehogs and other animals that looked absolutely nothing like you and wouldn't listen to any word to the contrary that they weren't you?" Knuckles asked.

Shadow sighed. "Something like that."

"Still pretty miffed about that," Sonic complained.

"At least you weren't put into a hospital," Mighty said bitterly.

"What about your friends?" Cream asked, alarmed.

"I hadn't met them yet. Although, to be honest, they don't believe most of the stuff I talk about either…" Sticks said bitterly. "They chalk up most of my warnings as just paranoid gibberish. And yeah, okay, some of that might be…all right, a LOT of it is…But it isn't always, and would it kill them to consider that maybe, just maybe, I might sometimes know what I'm talking about, given everything I've been through? Even Amy doesn't always feel like humoring me, and she's supposed to be my best friend…"

"What gives, Amy? Not cool!" Charmy angrily accused the pink hedgehog.

"Oh for the love of… That's not me, it's the other me!" Amy protested.

"Then you're saying you believe everything she's telling us right now?" Shadow asked skeptically.

Amy hesitated. "… Well… While I do find most of her claims a little… Outlandish…"

"That's one word for it," Silver muttered.

"It would be kind of hypocritical of me to just throw it out whole cloth," Amy continued. "After all, as strange and bizarre as her story sounds, it's not exactly like most of OUR pasts or adventures were average."

"… Fair point," Blaze admitted, and the others nodded in agreement.

"You actually believe me?" Sticks asked, surprised.

"Well, we don't really know you well enough to definitively say one way or the other," Sonic told her. "But we're willing to give you the benefit of the doubt for now. After all, though your backstory so far sounds even wilder and crazier than most of ours, given the ridiculous stuff that's happened to most of us, it would be wrong of us to not at least consider it might've happened at least somewhat the way you claim it did." Silver sighed in exasperation.

Sticks blinked and sniffled. "That's… Thanks, you guys. I wish my own friends could…" She shook her head. "Nevermind. Anyway, having lost all faith in other people, I decided it was time to head home. Even if nobody else believed me about all the conspiracies or impending apocalypses, I still knew they were coming, so figured I should do my best to prepare for it. Plus, I still needed to make sure the Froglodytes hadn't found a way to the surface. So I set forth, across blazing deserts…"

…

Sweating profusely, Sticks staggered over blistering sands, a scarf wrapped around her head to offer her some protection from the blazing sun, squinting as she was buffeted by sandy winds.

…

"And frozen tundra…"

…

Bundled up in so many parkas and fur coats it was a wonder she was able to move, Sticks struggled to push her way through a snowstorm.

…

"Up towering mountains…"

…

Sticks grunted as she slowly, inexorably pulled herself up the side of a towering mountain, Eagles crying as they flew past.

…

"And down the other side…"

…

Sticks screamed as she tumbled down a steep slope amidst a rock slide.

…

"Through murky swamps…"

…

Sticks waded through a bog, yelping when a snake abruptly lowered itself from a branch to hiss at her and what she'd taken to be a log revealed itself to be a crocodile.

…

"And verdant forests…"

…

Sticks wandered through a great forest, marveling at the massive trees towering around her.

…

"Through the urban jungle…"

…

Sticks started to cross a street in a busy metropolis, only to shriek and jump back just as a car nearly ran her over.

…

"And the actual jungle…"

…

Wielding a machete and wearing a hat, Sticks sliced and chopped her way through an overgrown rain forest.

…

"Over flower fields…"

…

Sticks frolicked through a flowery meadow, giggling as butterflies fluttered over her head.

…

"Battlefields…"

…

Sticks frantically scrambled under barbed wire as bullets shot over her head, explosions going off in the distance.

…

"Mine fields…"

…

Sticks yelled at the top of her lungs as she ran through a barren field, explosions going off in her wake.

…

"Killing fields…"

…

Sticks stared in horror at the numerous pikes rising up from the ground all around her, bodies impaled on their tops. Some of them were still twitching.

…

"Football fields…"

…

Sticks frantically ran across a grassy field in the middle of a huge stadium, over a dozen overmuscled athletes roaring as they chased after her and the ball she'd accidentally caught while passing through.

…

"And the suburbs…"

…

Sticks wailed as she ran her through somebody's backyard, pursued by a barking dog trailing a leash.

…

"Before finally, finally reaching the ocean…"

…

Sticks gazed out it the deep blue water spreading out before her from horizon to horizon as she stood on the beach, hands on her hips. "Wow, that sure was one heck of a travel montage!" She announced.

…

"Couldn't you have just taken public transportation or something?" Mighty interrupted.

"What are you, nuts? You have any idea the sort of mind altering substances coat the seats in most forms of public transport? Why do you think advertising companies pay so much to put posters and stuff on the sides and interiors of buses and the like? It's so the toxins on the seats will make you more susceptible to their subliminal messaging and go out and buy their stuff! It's so obvious!" Sticks ranted. "Plus, I didn't have enough money."

"… Right. Of course. What a stupid question," the armadillo said, sweatdropping.

"No offense to her, but I kind of understand why her friends might have trouble believing her…" Blaze murmured to Sonic, who shushed her.

"It's a different world, for all we know everything there is exactly as she says it is," he murmured back. She nodded in acquiescence.

"Why were you going to the ocean?" Asked a confused Espio.

Sticks blinked. "Huh? I didn't mention it before? I live on an island."

"Ohhhh," everyone said.

"Does it fly like Knuckles'?" Cream inquired.

Sticks shook her head. "Nah, Seaside Island is just a regular old run-of-the-mill island, like any other."

There was a pause. "Seaside Island?" Shadow asked, dumbfounded.

"Yeah, that's the name," Sticks confirmed.

"Isn't that a little redundant?" Amy asked.

"You think that's bad, my town used to be called 'Nameless Village,'" Sticks informed them.

Sonic blinked. "That's… An interesting name…" He said cautiously.

"Isn't calling it 'Nameless Village' actually giving it a name?" Asked a confused Vector.

"Most of the people back home aren't that smart," Sticks said flatly. "Anyway, it has a much better name: Hedgehog Village."

"Named after me, I presume?" Sonic asked, chest puffing up and pride.

"No, after Amy, who stood by me when pretty much the entire town shunned me for being descended from the evil Jebediah Badger," Sticks corrected him, causing Sonic to pout and Amy to beam.

"I have a town named after me? That's wonderful!" The pink hedgehog gushed.

"It's named after the other Amy, not you," Rouge reminded her.

"Let me have this," Amy growled.

"Now that I'd reached the beach, I built myself a raft and set sail for Seaside Island," Sticks continued.

"Why didn't you take a boat?" Charmy asked.

Sticks opened her mouth to answer, and Blaze quickly said, "Because you didn't have the money, and because there is probably some bizarre conspiracy attached to most boats?"

Sticks scowled at her. "Pretty much, yeah," the badger grumbled. "Unfortunately, about half way home, disaster struck!"

Cream gasped. "Did you get shipwrecked in a storm?"

"Were you attacked by a sea monster?" Mighty asked.

"Did you get lost in the Bermuda triangle and find yourself transported to whatever dimension all the missing boats and planes that vanished there went to?" Tails speculated.

"No, no, and yes, but that was on a separate occasion," Sticks said, shaking her head fiercely. "It was much worse than that! I realized that I left my favorite boomerang behind!"

Everyone sweatdropped. "AH," Omega said flatly.

"Also, I got captured by whale Pirates," Sticks added as an afterthought.

Sonic and Blaze immediately stiffened. "… Whale Pirates?" Rouge asked, dumbfounded.

Sticks nodded solemnly. "Whale Pirates."

…

"Yarr, we be whale Pirates!" A four foot tall sperm whale that was somehow standing on its tail wearing a tricorn hat and other pirate-y clothes, covered in scars, with an eyepatch over one eye, a hook over one Flipper and a cutlass in the other, and a crab on one shoulder bellowed. A couple dozen similarly attired whales of a variety of species standing on the ship deck behind their captain roared in assent, rattling their cutlasses and firing their flintlocks into the air as a bedraggled and tied-up Sticks stared at them in disbelief.

"Okay, this is a new one…" The badger muttered.

…

There is a long silence. "So. Whale Pirates," Shadow said finally.

"Yep," Sticks confirmed.

"That is apparently a thing now," said a clearly bewildered Rouge.

"Basically, yeah," Sticks said.

"I don't understand. Why were the whales Pirates?" Asked a confused Vector.

"Because whales are the scum of the earth, duh!" Sticks snorted.

Sonic nodded gravely. "Yeah, I can definitely confirm that."

Blaze shuddered. "I have fought Pirates. I have fought whales. But never before have I ever imagined battling whale Pirates. And just when I thought their villainy could go no further…"

"Oh, you guys hate whales too?" Sticks asked, surprised.

Sonic and Blaze nodded rapidly. "Personally, I'd be happy never to have to see their kind ever again," Sonic said gravely.

"I am currently in the middle of a genocidal campaign against their entire species back on my world," Blaze informed the badger.

"Neat. Normally I'd be totally opposed something like that, but given that I've never met a single whale that hasn't tried to kill me, I'm not complaining," Sticks said.

Cream whimpered. "Why does everyone hate whales so much?"

"A better question is why whales are apparently even eviler than the echidnas," Espio commented.

"I feel like I should take offense to that, except that it's so true…" Knuckles grumbled.

"So, what did the whale pirates do you?" Amy asked Sticks in concern.

"Probably gave her tests she forgot to study for and tried to probe her," Silver said sarcastically.

"No, they enslaved and tried to rape me," Sticks corrected the time traveler.

There was a pause. "Wait, what?"

…

"No! _No_! _NO_!" Sticks screamed in terror, tied belly down to a wooden table as a massive-

…

"NO!" Just about everyone shouted.

Sticks grimaced. "Yeah, probably not a good idea to show that bit to anyone."

Cream whimpered. Shadow hugged the rabbit to comfort her.

Espio, tearing up, clasped a hand to the badger's shoulder. "I never thought I would ever encounter someone else who understood what I've been through. I'm so sorry for you."

"Oh, so Pirates also tried to rape you, but you managed to break free at the last minute and make a daring escape?" Sticks asked in surprise.

"… No…" Espio whispered glumly.

"Okay, I think I'm starting to come around to Sonic and Blaze's way of thinking, horrific as it might be," Mighty said reluctantly.

"Who knew whales of all creatures could be Always Chaotic Evil?" Charmy wondered.

"Before my escape, I managed to overhear what the Pirates were up to," Sticks continued. "They were intending to raid the underwater city of Undersealandia, a magical submarine metropolis inhabited by a race of Seahorse people."

"They lived in a submarine?" Asked a confused Cream.

"Must be a pretty big one, for an entire species to live in it," Knuckles commented.

"I think when she says submarine, she's referring to 'underwater,' not the vehicle," Tails informed them.

"Basically, yeah," Sticks confirmed. "They DO travel across the seafloor on the back of a giant crab, though."

Blaze blinked. "… Something about this feels oddly familiar…"

"How were the Pirates going to raid the city? If it was on the bottom of the ocean, it's doubtful all of them would be able to dive that far down," asked a puzzled Rouge.

"Huh? Couldn't they just swim down?" Asked a confused Charmy.

"No, whales are mammals, not fish," Tails informed the bee. "They can't breathe underwater; they just can hold their breath for a very long time. And even then, not all of them have the right type of body to survive the crushing depths of the deepest reaches of the ocean."

"Their ship could turn into a submarine," Sticks explained. "As in the vehicle, not the synonym for being underwater, just to make that clear."

"We figured as much, yeah," Vector replied.

"Even so, just one ship against an entire city on the back of a giant crab?" Shadow asked skeptically.

"They had a secret weapon that I didn't know about until it was too late," Sticks informed them.

"How did YOU get down there, then?" Amy asked.

"The ship's dinghies and lifeboats can also turn into submersibles," Sticks explained. "Although to be perfectly honest, I wasn't trying to go to Undersealandia, I was trying to get as far away from the Pirates as possible. Unfortunately, the preprogrammed all of their boats to head down there, so I had no choice but to ride it out until I reached the city."

"You mean you weren't trying to save them?" Cream asked, surprised.

"After the way the rest of the world ignored my trying to save them from government conspiracies I found out about, I'd gotten pretty turned off to the whole 'hero' gig, so I was more interested in going home than dealing with more of this kind of stuff," Sticks confessed. "But, since I found myself forced to go down there, I just went with it. Not much else I could do."

"… Yes, I know what that's like…" Blaze said quietly.

"How were you able to breathe in the city, though?" Espio asked.

"I wondered the exact same thing when I first got there," Sticks replied.

…

"OH GOD! I'M UNDERWATER!" Sticks screamed, writhing on the sparkling seashell tiles making up the floor of the splendid city of coral towers rising all around her, bubbles rising from her form as the many beautiful anthropomorphic seahorses drifting about, their scales and fins bedecked with pearls and glittering jewels, stared at her in confusion. "I CAN'T BREATHE! I'M GONNA DROWN!"

"Actually, the water inside our city's protective dome is enchanted so that any who enter without ill intent can breathe just fine," one of the seahorses informed her.

"Oh, okay then," Sticks said, immediately calming down.

…

Everyone sweatdropped. "That's oddly convenient," Tails commented.

"What, would you rather I drowned?" Sticks demanded.

"Well, no, I just-" Tails stammered.

"Then quit complaining," the badger said sharply.

"Well, I suppose it's better than having to eat a rather noxious herb to grow gills whenever I want to visit Mulantis," Blaze mused.

"Good thing they were finally able to improve the taste of those things," Sonic commented. Blaze and Tails both nodded in agreement.

"Once I settled down, I immediately demanded they bring me to their leader, so I could warn them of about the Pirates!" Sticks continued. Her shoulder sagged. "It didn't go quite the way I hoped."

…

"What do you mean you don't believe me?!" Sticks demanded, starting to get rather unpleasant flashbacks of all the people who refused to listen to her conspiracy theories back on the mainland.

"Calm down, dear. I'm not saying I don't believe you when you say that there are pirates on the way," Otohime, the Queen of Undersealandia, a gorgeous white and pink Seahorse covered in shimmering silk and glittering gems with a lower body looking more like that of a Dragon than the rest of her people, told the badger gently. A variety of courtiers and servants flitted about the grand throne room filled with majestic statue-pillars of dragons and past members of the Royal family rising up to support the domed ceiling covered with a magnificent mosaic map of the world's oceans made of glittering gemstones and a stuffed alligator bedecked with pearls dangling from a chain, some just passing through to go about their business, while others gazed at the visitor from the surface world in curiosity or fixed all their attention on their beloved monarch in rapt awe. "It's simply that I don't understand how they could conceivably be a threat. Our soldiers are unmatched throughout the deep, the magical barrier protecting our city is virtually impregnable to those with evil will, the great Cancer which supports our home-"

…

"They had cancer?" a confused Knuckles interjected.

"No, I think she's referring to the giant crab," Tails explained.

"The crab had cancer?" Knuckles, still not getting it, asked.

"No dear, its _name_ was Cancer," Rouge explained.

"Why would they name their giant crab after a horrible disease?" The confused echidna asked.

"Cancer is also the name of the crab constellation," an exasperated Shadow told him.

Knuckles frowned. "Then why did they name a horrible disease after a constellation shaped like a crab?"

Tails opened his mouth, and then paused. "That's… A good question, actually…"

"Ahem," Sticks coughed, reminding them all that she had been in the middle of something.

…

"-Is all but invincible, and if things get REALLY bad, I can always use the sacred Dragon Orb to transform into a mighty sea Dragon to fight off our enemies," the Queen finished, nodding at the enormous carving of a great Dragon taking up the back wall behind her throne, a glittering Pearl the size of Sticks' head shining in the mighty wyrm's eye. "Why, it would take something the likes of the mad whale God Cetus to cause any _real_ trouble!"

Abruptly, a Seahorse clad in glittering but still very functional-looking armor burst into the room. "Your Majesty, the mad whale God Cetus is approaching!"

"What?!" The Queen shrieked. She and the rest of the court quickly swam over to the nearest window gazing out upon the magnificent metropolis, where, beyond the protective barrier encompassing the city, they could see an absolutely MASSIVE sperm whale covered in scars with protruding tusks, eyes gleaming with madness, and a horn like a narwhal's swimming towards them, other whales, so small in comparison to it they might as well have been minnows, floating around it, singing a ballad of war and death and blood. The ship of the whale Pirates, converted into a submarine form, led the pod towards the city, the Buccaneers' own songs of hatred and destruction mingling in with the rest to create a chorus of horrors promising bloodshed and atrocities unlike anything the underwater kingdom had ever seen before.

"Oh no…" The Queen whispered in horror, her subjects beginning to panic around her.

"Told you so," Sticks muttered.

…

Blaze stiffened. "Cetus?! He was there?!"

Sticks blinked in surprise. "Huh? Yeah, you know the guy?"

Blaze grimaced. "Unfortunately, yes. Long ago, I also had to save an underwater city from the mad God's wrath. However, the city was on the back of a sea turtle, and occupied by people more resembling fish than seahorses."

"Huh. Neat," Sticks said.

"Wait, I thought you killed Cetus," a confused Charmy spoke up.

"Cetus is a God, Charmy. Gods are not so easily destroyed," Blaze said solemnly.

Rouge nodded. "Yeah, even if you destroy their physical form, they still exist elsewhere in the cosmos, and given enough time and the right circumstances, could eventually gain a new body on the material plane. It's really, REALLY hard to kill one permanently. Trust me, I know."

Amy frowned. "Are you telling us that your family has killed gods? Forever?" Rouge smirked but said nothing.

"How did you vanquish Cetus when you faced him?" Blaze pressed the badger.

"Well, I didn't exactly fight him myself," Sticks admitted. "The guy was way too big. I learned that the only being he feared was the Master Shark-"

"ed'Rastekeresket t'k Gh'shestaesteh?" Blaze asked.

Sticks frowned. "Seriously? You know that guy too? And could actually pronounce his name in one go?!"

Blaze shrugged. "I had a lot of practice. Did you have as much trouble calling upon him as I did? To complete the ritual to summon him, I had to castrate Cetus and use his divine blood as a catalyst to call forth the great shark God."

Sticks whistled. "Hard-core. But nah, that's not what I did. Turned out that he already existed on my world, but the Undersealandians couldn't call him for help because the whale pirates had planned ahead and helped some jerkass Dolphins capture him, intending to sell him to Russian oligarchs in exchange for some sweet jet packs."

Cream gasped. "Oh no! That's horrible! Why would the dolphins ever do such a thing?"

"Because Dolphins are some of the nastiest punks to ever roam the seas, obviously," Sticks snorted, rolling her eyes. "Seriously, the only reason people love them so much is because they have great PR."

"She's not wrong," Tails confessed. "In real life, Dolphins are a lot crueler than most people think."

Blaze shuddered in revulsion. "Back home, whenever we think the whales have reached the depths of their depravity, the dolphins show us the error of our ways by proving just how bottomless their evil truly is."

Silver got a thousand-yard stare in his eyes. "During the Whale Wars, all the whales committed horrific atrocities against the surface world. But the dolphins… Most soldiers committed suicide rather than let themselves get captured by those sadistic bastards. I've seen pictures of what they did with their prisoners. I was never able to look at a blowhole the same way again."

There was a long silence. "… Can… Can we get off this topic, please?" Amy asked, fidgeting awkwardly.

"That would probably be a good idea," Rouge agreed.

"Right… Where was I? Oh right, the dolphins had captured that Ed guy and were going to sell him to Russian oligarchs in exchange for jet packs," Sticks recalled.

"Okay, Sticks, are you _sure_ you're not making a reference?" Knuckles asked suspiciously.

"I still have no idea what you're talking. I don't even watch TV," Sticks replied in annoyance.

"How do you even know about that show? It's on Netflix," Sonic asked the echidna.

"I got it free along with a bunch of other special channels when I bought my cursed television," Knuckles explained. "And since there isn't really a lot to do on my island most the time but guard the Master Emerald, I binge watch stuff to alleviate the boredom."

"That makes far too much sense," Vector muttered.

"Wait, does that mean that a bunch of the times when the Master Emerald was stolen or broken, it was because you were too busy watching television?" Amy asked suspiciously.

"No," Knuckles said a little too quickly.

Sticks rolled her eyes. "ANYWAY… Without the help of big Eddie, there was no way the Undersealandians could possibly repel the Pirates and their deity ally. While the Queen used the Dragon Orb to transform into a great sea Dragon to fight alongside her armies and cancer, I was sent along with some of her special forces to retrieve and Eduardo before it was too late."

Blaze grimaced. "Can you please stop calling him names like that? It's disrespectful."

"I'll stop calling him names like that when I finally figure out how to pronounce his real name correctly," Sticks said flatly.

"Given that you said you'd basically given up on people in general, I'm a little surprised you agreed to help them," Shadow commented.

Sticks grinned sheepishly. "Yeah, well, I guess I wasn't as cynical as I thought I was. Although to be fair, helping them was probably the only way I could possibly make it out of that mess in one piece. So, we caught up to the convoy transporting Edward to Russia, where we ran into a bit of a problem…"

…

Tempest, the black-armored leader of the seahorse Special Forces unit Sticks was attached to, frowned as she looked over the edge of the undersea Canyon they were at the top of. Below them and heading in their direction was a massive metal crate being towed by about a dozen dolphins, while a few dozen more swam around it, keeping an eye out for an ambush. "This isn't good…" Tempest muttered. "There are too many of them. I don't know how we're going to get close enough to rescue Lord ed'Rastekeresket t'k Gh'shestaesteh and make it out of there without taking serious casualties…"

"That's him, in the crate?" Sticks, wearing a magic pearl necklace enchanted to let her breathe underwater, asked skeptically. "Huh. Thought he'd be bigger from the way you all talked him up."

"He usually is," Tempest explained, looking outraged. "However, Lord ed'Rastekeresket t'k Gh'shestaesteh's true power, size, and majesty can only be maintained by constantly eating. By starving him, the dolphins have made him small and weak enough to transport to Russia. Those fiends! This is unforgivable!"

…

"Starving a bro?! Not cool!" Vector, who also ate quite a bit, cried indignantly.

"Doesn't that violate some international treaty or something?" Amy asked, looking repulsed.

"I don't think most of those treaties include undersea city-states as signatories," Rouge replied.

…

Sticks, who knew what it was like to go days without knowing where your next meal might come from, nodded in sympathy. She stroked her chin in thought, gazing down the Canyon to try and figure out a way to rescue the mighty shark. "Hey, what's that?" The badger asked, spotting what looked like a downed submarine resting in more or less one piece on a ledge halfway down the side of the canyon wall. "Is that a submarine?"

Glancing at where Sticks was pointing, Tempest nodded. "Yes, that's been there for many years. It sank a long time ago, presumably due to some equipment malfunction. None of us have dared to check it out for fear that we might set off whatever ordinance might still be on board."

"What makes you think there is any?" Sticks asked, though she was fairly certain that the submarine was carrying.

"We've long since learned how to tell submarines apart. From the make and markings on its side, it's most definitely a military submarine, carrying incredibly deadly cargo. Most likely nuclear," Tempest explained.

Sticks grinned madly. "Good to hear, because I think I just got an idea…"

…

"WAS-IT-TO-DETONATE-THE-WARHEADS-INSIDE-THE-SUBMARINE, CAUSING-A-GOOD-CHUNK-OF-THE-CANYON-TO-COLLAPSE-AND-PROVIDING-A-DISTRACTION-YOU-COULD-USE-TO AMBUSH-THE-STARTLED-DOLPHINS-AND-FREE-LORD ED'RASTEKERESKET T'K GH'SHESTAESTEH?" Omega asked eagerly.

"What?! No, of course not!" Sticks cried, alarmed. "What are you, crazy? Do you have any idea what that'd do to the environment?! No, we went with something much more sensible."

…

"Hey, dolphins! You suck!" Tempest shouted down at the dolphins from the top of the Canyon. Her troops presented their tails to the dolphins and started smacking them provocatively.

"What?! We do not suck!" the lead dolphin snarled as the other dolphins growled and glared menacingly at the seahorses.

"We can't let them talk to us like that!" a dolphin who was most certainly not Sticks in a shoddy dolphin costume spoke up.

"Yeah, that totally gorgeous chick is right! We should totally go up there and kill them and rape them and shit for talking smack to us like that!" Another dolphin was also most certainly not Sticks in a shoddy dolphin costume who'd quickly moved to the other side of the pod suggested.

"Yeah… Yeah, we should! Once the great Cetus has destroyed their city, the seahorse bitches won't be able to look down on us anymore! We should give them a taste of what their future's going to be like from now on!" The dolphin leader agreed. His face fell. "… Is what I'd like to say, except that we have to stay here and escort the Big Bad Shark to his final destination."

"What's that? You aren't coming after us to ravage and slaughter us? We thought you were dolphins, not flounders!" Tempest sneered. Her troops snickered and made various derogatory comments about the dolphins' ancestry and sexual prowess.

"Oooh! OOOOHHH! YOU ROTTEN LITTLE…" Roared, veins standing out on his for it.

"Hey, brah, don't worry about that loser shark dude, I'll stay here and guard him while the rest of you go take care of business!" Another dolphin that was almost definitely not Sticks in a shoddy dolphin costume declared.

The lead dolphin glanced at the dolphin that was almost definitely not Sticks in a shoddy dolphin costume in surprise. "Seriously? You'd do that, bro? And miss out on all the fun?"

The dolphin that was totally not Sticks in a shoddy dolphin costume waved a fluke dismissively. "Nah brah. I've got a pretty nasty rash from all the bitches I fucked this morning. Doctor says I should rest up on the ravaging for a bit until it feels better."

"Dude, that blows!" The lead dolphin said sympathetically.

"Yeah, well, these things happen," the dolphin that was absolutely not Sticks in a shoddy dolphin costume said nobly. "Go on, fuck 'em in my place. I'll wait here until you're done."

The leader shook his head in awe. "You are truly a righteous, righteous bro, bro. Don't worry, we'll make this quick."

"Take all the time you need, brah. I'm not going anywhere," the dolphin that really, really wasn't Sticks in a shoddy dolphin costume encouraged the leader.

"Heh, well, if you're sure! Come on, bros, let's show those bitches what a _real_ sea creature feels like!" The dolphin leader cried. His subordinates cheered ecstatically, and they surged upwards towards the seahorses, which had oddly not moved an inch during this deliberation. Giggling to themselves, the seahorses quickly swam off, and the dolphins followed in hot pursuit, leaving only the dolphin that was really, truly, absolutely, a real dolphin and not Sticks in a shoddy dolphin costume floating idly beside the big metal crate behind.

"Heh, suckers," the dolphin who actually WAS Sticks in a shoddy dolphin costume snickered to herself. (GASP! Who could have seen this coming?!)

…

Everyone stared at the badger incredulously. "Really?" Shadow asked skeptically.

"Oh, like none of you have ever managed to fool some dumb bad guys by dressing up in a really crappy disguise!" Sticks retorted.

"… I hate to admit it, but she kind of has a point," Tails said reluctantly.

"It's really strange how that works as often as it does," Amy commented.

"BUT-WHAT-ABOUT-THE-MISSILES-ON-THE-SUBMARINE?" Omega asked in dismay.

"Getting there," Sticks said.

…

Sticks knocked on the side of the crate. "Hey, Mister Ed, I'm here to rescue you. If I let you out, do you promise not to eat me?"

There was a pause, and then a smooth, patient voice which sent chills down Sticks' spine and caused her to suddenly become deeply aware of her own mortality said, "I promise not to eat you right away, assuming you can find me something else to devour before I lose control of my hunger and feast upon your flesh."

Sticks swallowed, suddenly wondering if this had been such a good idea. "I'll take that as a yes."

A moment later, she had easily picked the lock and quickly swam out of the way as the great ed'Rastekeresket t'k Gh'shestaesteh surged out of his prison, his very presence somehow causing the ocean around him to grow significantly darker and the water temperature to drop considerably. While Sticks had seen sharks before, in comparison to the massive bone-white specimen before her, the badger girl had to admit that they all seemed like pale imitations compared to this, the Ur-shark, the apex predator of apex predators upon which all of his species were but inadequate reflections. While he wasn't as big as she had imagined when she'd first thought of the idea of a shark deity, he was still much larger than she would've expected that crate to be able to contain, and his aura made him seem even bigger still, a pall of dread and primal terror washing over Sticks as the great carnivore turned his cold, black, dead eyes on her. She'd been close to death many times before in her wild and adventurous life, but never did she feel the Reaper's touch as close as she did when ed'Rastekeresket t'k Gh'shestaesteh opened his mouth and smiled at her.

There were far too many teeth. Some of them were bigger than she was.

"To whom, may I ask, do I have to thank for my freedom?" ed'Rastekeresket t'k Gh'shestaesteh asked calmly, as if he weren't only seconds away from going on a feeding frenzy which would cause the ocean to turn red with blood.

"Um. St-Sticks. Sticks the Badger. Sir," Sticks stammered nervously.

"A badger? We do not see many of your kind this far in the deeps. What brings you here, little surface dweller?" ed'Rastekeresket t'k Gh'shestaesteh asked curiously.

"I, uh, came here with some seahorses to rescue you on behalf of the Queen of Undersealandia. Some whale Pirates have summoned Cetus and are trying to destroy the city, and you're apparently the only one who can stop him," Sticks informed the dread Lord.

"Cetus? Hmm, I thought I smelled his fetid stench befouling my waters…" ed'Rastekeresket t'k Gh'shestaesteh mused. "So that is why he had his underlings abduct me. The coward was too afraid to face me honorably. Then again, considering how many times I have consumed him in the past, I suppose such behavior is not unwarranted." He frowned, which was somehow less terrifying than his smile, but only marginally. "Unfortunately, in my current state I am not strong enough to face him. I will require a good meal before I'm strong enough to vanquish that wretch once more." He licked his lips. "Thankfully, those dolphins that captured me should suffice…"

"Actually, I was kind of hoping you'd, um, not eat them," Sticks spoke up.

The shark God stated her blankly. "Those dolphins captured me, starved me, and intended to sell me to Russian oligarchs in exchange for paltry trinkets. Why ever should I not eat them?"

"Because I have an even better idea to get back at them, AND the rich bastards who hired them in the first place," Sticks said, some of her confidence coming back to her. She gestured at the downed submarine. "Tell me, do you know anything about ICBMs?"

ed'Rastekeresket t'k Gh'shestaesteh smiled again. She almost wished he hadn't.

…

"With Edd's help, I was able to get a missile out of the sub about as big and heavy as he was and put it in the box before the dolphins got back, my seahorse pals having given them the slip," Sticks elaborated. "After I assured them that nothing had happened while they were gone – – and snuck off when they weren't looking – – they continued on their way to Russia, with absolutely no idea that anything happened. When they arrived and delivered the crate to the Russians, the missile we stuck inside went off and blow up the whole lot of them!… As well as pretty much the entire country, killing millions."

There was a pause. "Wait, what?" Amy asked, dumbfounded.

"You blew up Russia?!" Shrieked an incredulous Rouge.

"I-TAKE-BACK-EVERY-NEGATIVE-COMMENT-I-HAVE-EVER-SAID-OR-THOUGHT-ABOUT-YOU," Omega said, optics glowing with awe.

"I didn't mean to!" Sticks yelled defensively. "I didn't know what the yield on that thing was! And, to be fair, at least I killed the Soviet Union once and for all."

"I thought the Soviet Union was disbanded at the end of the Cold War," said a perplexed Tails, struggling to wrap his mind around the idea that their new guest had destroyed an entire country by _accident_.

"Nah, that's just what they want you to think while they're trying to resurrect Stalin," Sticks insisted.

"… She's actually not wrong," Rouge admitted.

"Wait, seriously?!" Mighty asked, dumbfounded.

"What's next, are you going to tell us that Germany is actually still being run by a secret society of Nazis that are trying to revive Hitler, and Chairman Mao never really died and is still ruling Chun-Nan from the shadows?" Vector asked only half-sarcastically.

Shadow snorted. "Don't be preposterous! Hitler died decades ago in outer space. And Chairman Mao never existed, he was a mechanical dummy built by the North Koreans to secretly control Chun-Nan."

"… Okay, now I know you're making shit up, everyone knows North Korea is too incompetent to do something like that!" Charmy protested.

"That's what they want you to think," Shadow said seriously.

Sticks nodded. "Yeah, I could've told you that!"

"Wait, then does that mean the current leader of North Korea is actually an evil genius the likes of which the world has never seen before who's only been pretending to be a moron this whole time to lull the nations of the world into a false sense of security?" Sonic asked in concern.

"No, he really is that stupid, his ancestor was unusually clever for that family," Rouge assured him. The blue hedgehog sighed in relief.

"Why was Hitler in space in the first place?" asked a confused Espio.

"To take over the world with a Nazi mind control satellite," Shadow explained. "He was stopped by a special task force, thankfully, though he got off a quick burst before he was killed, which is why we still have so many neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers."

"Ah," the chameleon said blankly.

"…That explains so much," said a stunned Vector.

"What are Nazis?" Cream asked.

There was a long, awkward pause. "Something we'll talk about later," Shadow said finally, much to everyone's relief. The rabbit sighed in resignation.

"So, are we just going to ignore the fact that Sticks destroyed an entire country and killed millions of people?" Blaze spoke up.

"I'M-COOL-WITH-THAT," Omega said cheerfully.

"And how many countries and people have you killed?" Amy asked pointedly.

"… They weren't by accident…" Blaze muttered.

"What about those worlds you may or may not have destroyed on your way to your current dimension?" Knuckles asked.

Blaze flinched. Sonic glared at the echidna. "We don't like to talk about that, remember?"

Knuckles winced. "Sorry."

"How are you taking this, Cream?" Charmy asked the rabbit in concern.

Cream bit her lip. "Well…I don't like the idea she destroyed an entire country, but…if it was an accident, and they were bad people, I guess it's…well, not _okay_ but…I guess it's…understandable?"

"…Bad people. Right," Shadow said hesitantly, not sure he wanted her to think about how most of those millions of Russians probably HADN'T been evil.

"So," Sticks said loudly to hopefully make everyone forget her act of accidental genocide. "We got Edwin enough food to help him regain his true size and power – – – and no, I am not going to tell you how we did it, because that memory will haunt me for the rest of my life – – and he called an army of sharks and attacked Cetus and his whales. It was… Well, a massacre. Pure and simple. I didn't see most of what happened because pretty much everything was obscured by the massive cloud of red which enveloped everything for miles around the second the sharks entered their feeding frenzy."

"Yeesh. Talk about a bloodbath…" Sonic muttered.

"I-WISH-I-COULD-HAVE-SEEN-THAT," Omega said longingly.

"The second she saw the sharks coming, Otohime reverted to her normal form and rushed back into the city along with all of her warriors and quickly ordered Cancer to skedaddle before the sharks could pick up on the scent from their wounds and eat them too," Sticks went on.

"Why would they eat her and the seahorses? I thought they were allies," said a confused Cream.

"Sharks don't really distinguish from friend and foe when they start eating," Blaze explained to the rabbit. "When they smell blood in the water, anything, and I mean ANYTHING is fair game. Even their own kind."

Cream shuddered. "Oh dear…"

"When it was all over, there was nothing left of the whales but a few scraps of flesh and bone and a few lingering clouds of blood in the water," Sticks recounted. "Edelstein, after regaining his senses, swung by to thank us for the meal and to tell me that Cetus had tried to cast a dying curse on me for bringing this fate upon him, but got his tongue bitten off before he could finish."

Blaze scowled. "Wish he'd done that for me. Then I wouldn't be in the middle of a heated battle with all of whalekind for control of the seas."

"To be fair, it was probably only a matter of time before they tried to destroy you anyway," Sonic pointed out. "Whales are pure evil, after all."

"True enough," Blaze admitted.

"You'd probably be surprised to learn how long they've been plotting to kill us all," Silver said seriously.

"I got a medal and a big fancy ceremony to thank me for helping save the city. Afterwards, the seahorses provided me with a fancy ship I could use to travel to rest the way home, and promised to use their influence to stop any conspiracy involving the ocean, be it for transport or something more sinister," Sticks continued. "Everything seemed like smooth sailing from there on out. So naturally, that's when I fell into the Bermuda triangle."

…

"OH, COME ON!" Sticks screamed, frantically trying to drive her elaborately ornate magitek watercraft out of the glowing and crackling whirlpool trying to suck her in while overhead dark clouds rumbled and bolts of oddly-colored lightning streaked through the skies.

…

"Oh yeah, was wondering if you were going to follow up on that," Mighty commented.

"So, the Bermuda triangle in your world really is some sort of supernatural anomaly," Tails observed.

"What, it isn't in your world?" Sticks asked in confusion.

"It is," Rouge confirmed.

"Wait, really?" Asked a surprised Sonic. "Nothing weird ever seems to happen when I'm in the vicinity. Which is… Actually pretty strange for me, come to think of it…"

"Why would you ever be in the vicinity? You hate water," Espio pointed out.

"I hate water, but love islands. They make great daiquiris down there," Sonic said fondly.

"I don't mind the ocean so much either. So long as I don't have to get in it. Or deal with whales," Blaze said in disgust. Sonic nodded in agreement.

"The Bermuda triangle really _is_ a supernatural anomaly, but nothing happens unless the right circumstances are met," Rouge explained. "Three times out of four you go there nothing happens. But if you happen to be there when the Ley lines converge and the planets are aligned juuuust right… Well, then things get interesting."

"Interesting how?" Tails asked.

"The Triangle is one of those 'soft' places in the world where our reality occasionally intersects with others, leading to dimensional rifts," Rouge explained. "Where those rifts lead varies on a truly alarming list of factors including the time of day, the weather, the tide, what sort of fish are swimming nearby…if you aren't careful, you could find yourself sailing or flying into another world entirely, and never find your way back. Such is most likely the fate of most of the boats and planes that have gone missing there over the centuries."

Blaze nodded in understanding. "Yes, we have many places like that in my world as well. It is most likely that a similar anomaly is how you and Tails arrived in my world on your first visit, Beloved."

"I thought the Emeralds did that," Sonic said in confusion.

"They did, by agitating a pre-existing weak point in the space-time continuum to create a breach that would transport us across worlds," Tails explained.

"Oh," Sonic said.

"Were you transported somewhere, Miss Sticks?" Cream asked.

Sticks nodded. "I was indeed. After my engine finally went kaput and I was dragged, screaming and flailing my arms and panic, into the vortex, I found myself…"

…

Sticks was sitting on a bench.

She looked to her left. Nothing but white.

She looked to her right. Nothing but white.

She looked up. Nothing but white.

She looked over her shoulder. Nothing but white.

She looked down. Nothing but white. She tapped her foot experimentally, and while she could feel a surface, it didn't make any noise when her foot pressed against it.

Scowling, she stared straight ahead, into even more white. "Well, this blows."

…

"Well, that sounds familiar…" Sonic muttered.

Amy nodded. "Yeah, except there was a lot more stuff the last time. Also, we were turned to stone or frozen in time or something."

Vector shuddered. "Not a pleasant experience…"

…

"It's actually much more fantastic than you could possibly imagine, but your mortal mind is incapable of perceiving this realm as it really is, hence this white space," said a voice right next to her, startling Sticks and causing her to jump off the bench with a yelp. Whipping out her boomerang, she turned to face-

…

"Let me guess, it was a talking pineapple?" Knuckles asked.

Sticks gave him a confused look. "What? No, that's stupid. Why would it be a talking pineapple?"

"Yeah, where did that idea come from?" Asked a dumbfounded Mighty.

"It's… Nevermind, it's not important," said the annoyed Knuckles.

…

-A wily-looking red-brown echidna wearing a tattered tribal outfit, beads in his dreadlocks, sandals, and a walking stick sitting on the bench. Sticks narrowed her eyes, suspicious. "And I'm guessing my brain is incapable of handling what you really look like, and this is just a form you thought I'd be comfortable with?"

"No, this is really me," the echidna said cheerfully. He extended a hand. "Hi, my name is Athair. It's a pleasure to meet you."

…

Knuckles gasped. "Great-grandfather Athair!"

Sticks blinked. "Huh? Oh yeah, that's right, Knuckles in countless universes are related to countless crazy old kooks named Athair who've somehow transcended space and time."

Knuckles pause. "Wait, does that mean it might not be my Athair, but somebody else's?"

Sticks shrugged. "Maybe? There are a lot of Athair's out there."

Knuckles'shoulders slumped. "Oh."

"Don't worry, Knuckles, I'm sure you'll meet yours someday," Rouge told the echidna reassuringly, patting him on the shoulder.

"And maybe we could too. I liked him in Tikal's story. He sounded neat," Charmy commented.

…

Sticks did not take the strange old echidna's hand. "Not sure I can say the same for you. Where the heck am I?"

"Well, Sticks-" Athair began.

Sticks gasped. "How did you know my name?! I never told you that!"

"I'm a transcendent being disconnected from space and time as you know it. I know lots of things," Athair explained.

This did not reassure Sticks. "Then you can read my mind?! I don't want anyone in there! There's stuff in there nobody can know, not even me! _Especially_ not me!"

Athair chuckled. "Don't worry, little one, any secrets you have I promise will never leave my lips. Besides, I've seen worse."

Sticks frowned. "I'm not sure if that makes me feel any better."

The echidna shrugged. "It wasn't supposed to. Anyway, to answer your question: when you fell into the dimensional rift in the Bermuda triangle, you found yourself here, in the realm of my Masters, the Ancient Walkers, among the oldest and most powerful extradimensional beings in all of existence."

…

Rouge and Shadow both stiffened at this. "The Ancient Walkers…" The black hedgehog murmured.

"This could be rather… Informative…" Rouge agreed.

Knuckles got excited again. "My great-grandfather Athair serves elder powerful extradimensional beings called the Ancient Walkers!"

"So do lots of Athair's," Sticks said. Knuckles sagged again.

"The Ancient Walkers? Those are the guys who intervened to save some of the echidna race from being wiped out by their own stupidity, right?" Mighty recalled.

Knuckles made a face. "You don't have to say it like that…"

"Looks like we're going to get a chance to see what they're like," said an intrigued Blaze.

…

Sticks blinked. "Okay…" She said uncertainly. She glanced at the bench. "Is that a real bench, or also something so completely unfathomable the only way I can maintain my sanity is to imagine it as a bench?"

"No, it's an actual bench. I'm an old echidna, and sometimes I feel the need to sit down for a while," Athair explained. "It's also a convenience for any mortal visitors we should happen to receive. Make them feel a little more comfortable. It's often a long, hard journey from wherever they come from to reach this place."

"Didn't feel that long to me," Sticks argued.

"Oh, it was. You just blocked most of it out," Athair assured her.

"To protect my sanity?" Sticks questioned.

"Basically," Athair replied.

…

"Doesn't seem like it did a very good job…" Silver muttered. Everyone glared at him. "What? Like you weren't thinking the same thing?"

"Maybe, but at least we weren't _saying_ it," Amy pointed out. The time traveler grunted.

…

Sticks folded her arms, frowning at the ancient echidna. "So what the heck am I doing here anyway? Did that magical whirlpool spit me out here by accident, or…?"

Athair shook his head. "No, there was no accident. We wanted you to come here. You see, my Masters wished to meet you."

"Those Ancient Walker dudes, right? Well, where are they?" Sticks asked. "Because right now I feel like giving them a piece of my mind!"

"Oh, they're right over there," Athair said, nodding behind Sticks.

The badger turned around to see that there were three entities standing there that had not been there before. One looked like a pterodactyl wearing a grey mask shaped like an upside-down gourd with a quirky smile and elongated quadrangular white eye stripes with horizontal slits drawn across them and other white stripes and dots on the top and sides. The other two were green-scaled bipedal reptilians, but one was tall, thick, and stocky, while the other was shorter and skinnier. The taller one was wearing an orange mask which covered his entire head with a few green feathers and a large yellow beak protruding from the front with white painted eyes with yellow irises and horizontal slit pupils looking out over it, a circular necklace with a three-pointed star draped around its neck and a thick wooden stake that looked it could kill any vampire clutched in its right hand. The shorter, skinnier one wore a huge dark Blue Shield-shaped mask at least as big as it was with purple tufts growing from the sides and white markings covering the surface with large round eyes with horizontal slit pupils and a white semi-circle with another horizontal line in it to represent a mouth, clutching a stick with an orb resembling Saturn on the top, like some sort of wand.

Sticks blinked. "Okay, don't tell me, this is what they actually look like?"

"Oh no, their true forms are beyond your mortal comprehension and these are forms they've chosen that they thought you'd be more comfortable with," Athair explained.

"They thought I'd be more comfortable with dinosaurs wearing masks?" Sticks asked skeptically.

Athair shrugged. "Sure, who doesn't like dinosaurs?"

Sticks could not refute that logic.

...

"Guy's got a point," Mighty continued. Pretty much everyone else nodded in agreement.

"I'm descended from dinosaurs! Probably why I'm so awesome," Vector boasted.

"Actually, Vector, the crocodilians from the prehistoric era cannot be classified as dinosaurs, any more than pterodactyls or the great sea lizards could," Tails interjected.

Vector deflated at that. "Oh."

"On the other hand, your species is – – on the broad scale – – not all that different from your prehistoric ancestors, much like sharks haven't changed all that much over the last few million years," Tails continued.

"Oh! Well, naturally, evolution must have realized there wasn't much more it could do to perfection!" Vector said, puffing himself up again.

"If you're so perfect, why are we living in a shithole apartment with dead-end jobs and Charmy's about to get eaten by a literal loan shark?" Espio asked flatly.

"… Shut up…" Vector grumbled.

"Miss Blaze, do you have dinosaurs in your world?" Cream asked eagerly.

"I do, as a matter fact. Some of them are even friendly," Blaze told the rabbit. She decided not to tell her it was mainly because she'd long since destroyed all of the more hostile ones.

"It's pretty sweet, actually. I got to ride a T Rex!" Sonic recalled happily. "Which, let me tell you, is much better than being chased by one. I know from experience."

"So what, you've got some sort of Jurassic Park deal over there? You know that sort of thing never ends well, right?" Charmy asked skeptically.

"To be fair, by the time of Jurassic World they had a fully functioning Park which was working perfectly, until they got greedy and desperate and tried to create their own dinosaur," Tails pointed out. "And even then, it might still have worked out okay if they'd designed its enclosure better."

"It's not a problem in my world," Blaze assured them. "The dinosaurs we have are much more intelligent, and less inclined to eat someone if they get hungry."

"Hey Silver, they got dinosaurs in your time period, too?" Knuckles asked the time traveler.

"Why would there be dinosaurs in his era? He comes from the future, not the past," said a confused Shadow.

"Yeah, but I figured in the future they'd have the technology to resurrect dinosaurs from fossils or something," Knuckles pointed out. "Isn't that how it usually works?"

"I'd be offended by your trying to paint my time period in such broad sweeping generalizations… But yeah, we've got dinosaurs," Silver admitted.

"Cool," Knuckles said.

"Could we visit?" Vector asked.

"No," Silver said firmly.

"Don't worry, you can come visit the ones in my world," Blaze promised. _After I make sure there's nothing you idiots could possibly screw up from crossing over…_

"I'm gonna hold you to that," the crocodile said.

"Can we please get back to my story?" Sticks asked in annoyance.

"Oh, right, sorry," Amy said apologetically. "Proceed."

…

"Okay, so, why'd you guys bring me here?" Sticks asked the Ancient Watchers.

"Well, you see-" Athair began.

"I'm asking them, not you," Sticks interrupted.

"I speak for them when interacting with mortals. If they were to attempt to speak to you directly-" Athair began.

"Right, right, I'll go insane or something. Got it," Sticks interrupted, rolling her eyes in annoyance. "All right then, why am I here?" She asked again, this time addressing the echidna.

"Simply put, young badger… We need your help," Athair said seriously.

Sticks groaned. "Seriously? I just got done saving an underwater civilization!"

"And you did a fine job of it, too. Unfortunately, a hero's work is never done," Athair pointed out.

Sticks made a face. "Not really sure I'm that much of a hero…"

"Well, the Ancient Watchers consider you to be enough of one, or else you wouldn't even be here," Athair told her.

"I guess…" Sticks said rather doubtfully. "But why do they need my help? If they're so all-powerful and stuff, why can't they resolve whatever big Multiversal crisis or whatever's about to happen on their own?"

"They're called the Ancient WATCHERS, not the Ancient DOERS," Athair informed her.

Sticks considered this for moment. "Oh. Okay, yeah, that makes sense."

…

"Seriously?" Sonic asked in disbelief.

"What? It's in the name!" Sticks said defensively.

"From what the professor taught me, and corroborated by what Tikal told us, the Ancient Watchers are more of observers then meddlers, who will only rarely interfere in the affairs of lesser beings for reasons which probably make sense only to themselves," Shadow hypothesized.

"But why? What's the point of having all that power if you don't do anything with it but just… Watch?" Amy asked skeptically.

"Maybe they don't want to affect our development too much and see how we grow on our own?" Tails suggested.

"Or maybe they're just assholes who get their jollies watching us flail about with no idea what we're doing?" Espio offered cynically.

"Or, more likely, they are entities so far beyond our understanding that any attempt to fathom why they do anything will end in failure," Rouge reasoned.

"So what exactly did they need your help with?" Mighty asked.

"I asked them the exact same thing," Sticks said.

…

"So what exactly do you need my help with?" Sticks asked.

"At this exact moment? Nothing," Athair told her.

Sticks blinked. "Huh? But I thought-"

"There is no great danger to the multiverse at this point in time, but in the future, there WILL be," Athair explained. "There always is, sooner or later."

"Oh. Yeah, that makes sense," Sticks admitted. "So… What, you're trying to recruit me so that if and when something happens, I'll be there to help if needed?"

"Basically, yes," Athair agreed.

Sticks made a face. "I dunno… If you guys have really been watching me-"

"Since the moment of your birth, and before," Athair said cheerfully.

Sticks pause for long moment. "Okay, that just creeps me out even more than every conspiracy I know of or have ever dreamed of."

"Don't worry, you're not the only one. We watch everyone!" Athair explained.

"Yeah, that doesn't make it sound any better," Sticks said flatly. "Anyway, you've probably noticed by now that I don't take too well to government conspiracies or secret societies or anyone who tries to tell me how I should live my life. Why should I work for or have anything to do with entities that are basically the embodiment of the spying and intrusion of privacy I despise so much?"

"Because we don't seek to control you? Because we only wish to keep the multiverse a safe and stable place for you and all other living things?" Athair offered.

"My world doesn't seem that safe and stable," Sticks said skeptically.

"Trust me when I say there are worlds far worse off than yours out there in the cosmos, Sticks. And worlds that are better. Or worlds that are more or less the same," Athair said with a shrug. "In a nigh-infinite multiverse, all things and all worlds are possible. And no matter how bad off you believe your world to be, at least it's THERE, which it would not be if being such as ourselves weren't there to… Well, watch everything and make sure that the right individuals are in the right place at the right time to keep everything going."

"So what, I should be thanking you?" Sticks asked dubiously.

"You can if you want to. Or not. It's really up to you," Athair said with a shrug. "We don't need thanks, the knowledge that we are doing our jobs well and fighting the good fight is gratification enough for us."

"Uh-huh. And what gratification would _I_ get out of doing this?" Sticks asked doubtfully.

"Other than the knowledge that literally countless people across reality will be able to sleep a little bit safer with you on the job?" Athair asked.

"I don't know these people and they don't know me. Why should I care about them?" Sticks asked skeptically.

"Not knowing people didn't stop you from trying to save them by exposing all the conspiracies you learned about while in captivity on the Internet," Athair pointed out.

Sticks clenched her fists for moment. "That was before I realized people are ungrateful morons who'd rather believe a satisfying lie then confront the truth that things aren't the way they think they are."

"Sadly, an affliction common to people all over the multiverse," Athair said sympathetically. "Although I will admit that the majority of the people on your world are more apathetic than most. But if you're so willing to abandon them to their fate, why then did you help save the Undersealandians?"

"It's not like I helped them out of the generosity of my heart or anything," Sticks said defensively. "If it weren't for the fact that they were my only ticket to getting out of that mess in one piece, I would have left them to die."

Athair raised an eyebrow. "Do you really mean that?"

Sticks opened her mouth for a moment, hesitated, then grimaced and glanced away. "… Well, by the time I got there, it wasn't like they were some faceless mass I'd never met before. They seemed… Nice. It wouldn't have been right to leave them in the lurch."

Athair nodded. "So you are willing to fight for the people you care about, but don't care that much about everyone else? There's nothing particularly wrong with that. It's easier to fight for something solid and meaningful than some vague concept."

"Yeah, well, I don't have anyone I care about," Sticks said, bitter once again. "Nobody I want to protect other than me."

"I can think of a good number of snails and seahorses who would beg to differ," Athair argued.

Sticks couldn't meet his eyes. "I'm not the badger they think I am."

"Or perhaps you're not the badger _you_ think you are," Athair said enigmatically. "But let us move on. If you had not been transported to this place, what would you have done once you returned to your den? Isolate yourself from the rest of your world, ignored everything that happened beyond your walls?"

"What? No!" Sticks spluttered in alarm. "I'm not some sheeple! I would definitely keep tabs on what was going on elsewhere! How else could I know how much time is left before the apocalypse, or what shady business the world's governments are up to next?"

"And would you do anything about them?" Athair asked benignly.

"If I believed I could, then yeah! I mean, I already stopped one robot Apocalypse from happening, didn't I?" Sticks said smugly. "I'm sure I could prevent another, so long as I knew was coming."

"But why? I thought you said you didn't care about protecting people you don't know about," Athair questioned.

"I don't! But if I gotta live in the same world as them, I don't want it to be a sucky one!" Sticks insisted.

Athair nodded. "Just like if you must live in the same multiverse as everyone else, you don't want it to be a terrible one?"

Sticks nodded vigorously. "Yeah, that's-" she paused, realizing what he just been tricked into admitting. "Dammit."

"Without your help, we cannot guarantee that the multiverse will remain a tolerable place for everyone to live," Athair said gently.

Sticks grimaced and looked away. "Look, even if that's true, you're asking the wrong girl. I'm not… I'm not the hero you're looking for."

Athair raised his eyebrows. "Truly? Modesty is not something I expected from you, Sticks. I'd say you're more than hero material given your track record so far. You spent most of your life growing up in the wilderness on your own, trained an underground civilization to fight back against their predators, survived being held captive by both aliens and the military for quite some time, thwarted a robot Apocalypse before it could even begin, saved an undersea civilization from extinction… And although you may think nobody paid attention when you released all that conspiracy information on the Internet, more people took notice than you might think. You did more damage to the shadowy conspiracies that seek to control your world than you may ever realize."

"Well, I admit I've done a bit of good in the world, but… Compared to the sort of stuff you're implying… Don't you think you should be looking for someone else? Someone stronger, smarter, less…" The badger trailed off.

"Of a paranoid conspiracy survivalist freak?" Athair finished.

Sticks winced. "Not exactly the words I was going to use, but…"

"Believe it or not, Sticks, but you are, in fact, ideal for the role," Athair told her.

"Really?" Sticks asked skeptically.

Athair nodded. "Really. I can see you aren't convinced, though. How about this: let me at least explain the job we are offering you, the duties and responsibilities involved, as well as the benefits. If you don't like it, not only will we send you right back to your den on Seaside island, but as thanks for at least hearing us out, we will give you an unlimited supply of tinfoil hats, as well as a small fraction of the power that you would be granted if you agreed to join us: the ability to glimpse a part of the true nature of reality, to understand the way the world and the people in it _really_ work, which will allow you to better predict what will happen and combat the forces that would seek to destroy you and all you hold dear. Granted, you won't be able to remember how you got all that, since we would need to erase your memory before sending you home, but I think that's a pretty generous offer for just lending me your ear for a few minutes, don't you?"

"You had me at 'tinfoil hats,'" Sticks said, intrigued.

…

"Tinfoil hats? Really?" Silver asked in disbelief.

"Believe it or not, but tinfoil hats really ARE the perfect way to keep your mind from being controlled by hypnotic brainwaves or read by spy satellites," Sticks said seriously.

"Is that true, Tails?" Cream asked the Fox.

"I've never actually tested it," Tails admitted. "I suppose it might be worth a check…"

"Given how often we run into enemies or robots that want to try and control our minds, that sort of protection might prove useful," Espio noted.

"Plus, maybe it'll keep Shadow from doing whatever other people tell him to on the flimsy excuse that he'll learn more about his past," Knuckles joked.

"And maybe it'll stop YOU from believing everything anyone else tells you," Shadow retorted.

The Echidna grimaced. "Fair point."

…

The Ancient Walker wielding a stake raised his hands into the air, and suddenly the five of them were no longer in the white space but somewhere… Else. A space equally infinite, but full of marbles of every color in the spectrum and quite a few that weren't, all of them glittering with twinkling lights contained within their semitransparent surfaces. Glistening strands stretched out between the marbles, connecting every marble to all the adjacent ones around it and forming a vast web of magnificent light and color.

"Whoa…" Sticks murmured, eyes growing wide.

"Behold the multiverse!" Athair declared. "It doesn't actually look like this, of course, but this is a form your mortal mind is more likely to be able to comprehend. Each of the marbles you see surrounding you is a universe, and all those lights galaxies, each of which potentially contain over a squintabazillionjillion life forms scattered across an almost countless number of worlds."

"It's beautiful…" Sticks whispered, awestruck.

Athair smiled sadly. "Indeed, it is. Unfortunately, not everyone sees it that way."

The marbles trembled, shudders running down the threads binding them and causing the glittering cosmos to quake and quiver. A darkness spread across the multiverse, engulfing every marble and extinguishing the light within, spreading faster than Sticks could comprehend, to the point where she hadn't even realized it had swept over her until it was long past. Every speck of light had vanished, and there was nothing but absolute darkness in every direction.

The badger shook, the weight of the utter _nothingness_ pressing down on her with even greater pressure than the ocean she had recently visited. "Bring it back," she whispered. "Bring it back bring it back _bring it back!"_

"Very well," said Athair.

The skinny Walker raised his staff…

And just like that, the darkness was gone, and the multiverse was surrounding them once again. "What… What _was_ that?!" Sticks demanded, trying to stop her trembling.

"There are evils and disasters which threaten towns. Nations. Planets. Galaxies. Universes," Athair recited. "And then there are forces which, either willingly or unknowingly, seek to destroy all that ever is, was, or ever will be. It is forces like these that our group combats."

"How… How can you fight something like… Like that?!" Sticks demanded.

"It's not quite as bad as you might think. There are numerous organizations dedicated to protecting the multiverse, of which we are but one," Athair assured the badger. "Our methods and recruitment processes differ from most of them, but given the sheer size and scope of the multiverse, that's hardly unexpected, is it?"

"I suppose not," Sticks admitted. "So, what is it you guys do differently? And again, why me?"

"Getting there. As for the first question…" He reached out with a hand, grasped one of the marbles, and tugged on it. The strands binding it to the marbles around it snapped, and the marble shattered in Athair's hand, causing Sticks to flinch. The loose strands flailed about in confusion for moment, then reached out and wrapped around each other, weaving a knot and holding steady. "Most of the time, when a universe is destroyed, it's not that bad. Well, yes, it's a horrific tragedy, but on a cosmic level? Not that big a deal, and eventually a new universe will be born to replace it." As Sticks watched, a glimmer of light sparked into being in the knot, and slowly grew outwards, turning into a new marble.

"However… That is not always the case." Athair looked around for a moment, and then spotted another marble which was glowing just a little bit brighter than the ones around it. "From time to time, certain universes come into being that have a sort of stabilizing element on the entire multiverse. Power flows from them to the universes surrounding them, maintaining them and keeping them healthy and full of life. There are many names you could call them… Nexus points, keystones, axioms, Primes, nodes, and so forth… Regardless what label they are given, they are of crucial importance to the continuing existence of the multiverse.

"So if something were to happen to them…" Athair reached out and grabbed the marble. He tugged, but unlike the universe before, it didn't break free from the strands. He pulled harder, and harder, and eventually managed to yank it loose…

Along with all the universes it was connected to, and all the universes _they_ were connected to, and all the universes _those_ universes were connected to, and so on, and so on, until hundreds of thousands if not millions of universes ceased to exist, and there was a gaping hole in the fabric of the multiverse. "… Holy crap," Sticks whispered, horrified.

"Yes, rather gruesome, isn't it?" Athair agreed, making a face. He glanced at the skinny Ancient Walker, who once again raised his staff, restoring all the marbles that had just been destroyed. "What our group does is locate these Keystone universes and make sure they're properly defended. While many of these worlds already have powerful heroes to protect them, even they have their limits, especially against the sorts of cosmic evils we regularly deal with. Once we've found one of these universes, we look for individuals that dwell within it who meet our criteria."

"Criteria?" Sticks asked.

"Like most omnibenevolent omnipotent beings granting unfathomable cosmic power to lesser beings, we have strict guidelines determining who and what we're willing to bestow our gifts to. Making the wrong decision can have horrific consequences for the entire multiverse," Athair explained. "The people we tend to choose are those whose minds work a bit… Differently from everyone else. Others might call them crazy, or idiots, or deluded fools because they see things that nobody else can, things that don't quite fit in with the way the world is believed to work. Most the time, those people really _are_ crazy or idiots or deluded fools. However… That is not always the case. Every now and then, a person is born with the capacity to glimpse, albeit imperfectly, the greater reality beyond their own, perceiving a fraction of the way the world _really_ works, and their place in it. I was one such person, back when I was alive.

"And you, Sticks, are another."

"I am?!" Sticks asked in surprise, startled.

"Oh yes, indeed you are. All your life, haven't you felt as if your awareness of the world isn't the same as everyone else? Haven't you always felt like you were being watched from afar, by entities you were unable to spot no matter how hard you looked?" Athair asked.

"Well, yeah," Sticks admitted. "But I kind of assumed it was the government spying on me. And, well, you, I suppose."

"It was," Athair agreed. "But it wasn't just us. Beyond the furthest veil of reality, past even the reach of the Ancient Watchers, are the beings that _truly_ shape and govern reality as we know it. They watch us, make us, love us, hate us, and sometimes even destroy us. You've been subconsciously aware of them all your life, and because of that awareness, you have a better insight, more than anyone else in your world, of how the world truly works… And how you can use it to your advantage."

For long moment, Sticks was stunned as she considered this. Finally, she said, "You know, I feel like I should be surprised by this. That I should be feeling some sort of horrifying existential dread at the knowledge that the world is not only bigger that I could ever imagine, but there are so many entities so completely beyond my comprehension watching me. Watching all of us. But… Deep down, I think I always knew. Huh. Maybe that's why I've always had such a strong suspicion of so-called authority figures and the incessant hatred of being watched."

Athair nodded. "Yes, most with your particular abilities feel the same way. Well, somehow failing to feel any particular existential dread, not the hyper paranoia. Most of them are okay with that, though it might be because they're all little bit crazy, which seems to be a bit of prerequisite for this level of perception. Or perhaps it's because of it? Chicken and the egg…" He shrugged. "Regardless, there are actually many in your world that possesses some degree of this awareness, but it's rarely consistent, surfacing for brief moments, usually when it's most humorous, for whatever reason. You, however, are ALWAYS aware, which is both a blessing and a curse, depending on how you want to look at it."

"Yeah, I could see that," Sticks agreed. "This ability got a name?"

Athair nodded. "There are many names for it, but the most popular, in my opinion, is the literary term called 'Breaking the Fourth Wall.'"

"What wall?" Asked the confused Sticks.

…

"Yeah, what wall?" Knuckles interrupted.

"The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imagined wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this "wall", the convention assumes, the actors act as if they cannot," Tails spoke up. "Breaking the fourth wall" is any instance in which this performance convention, having been adopted more generally in the drama, is violated. This can be done through either directly referencing the audience, the play as a play, or the characters' fictionality. The temporary suspension of the convention in this way draws attention to its use in the rest of the performance. This act of drawing attention to a play's performance conventions is metatheatrical. A similar effect of metareference is achieved when the performance convention of avoiding direct contact with the camera, generally used by actors in a television drama or film, is temporarily suspended. The phrase "breaking the fourth wall" is used to describe such effects in those media. Breaking the fourth wall is also possible in other media, such as video games, TV, movies, and books."

"I understood almost none of that," Knuckles complained.

"Breaking the fourth wall is when a fictional character draws attention to the fact that they're fictional instead of continuing to act as if they really exist in their own self-contained world," Shadow explained.

"Oh, like when the characters in the TV shows I watch sometimes talk to me?" The echidna asked.

"Yes, except in your case it's because your television is cursed. Most of the time when a character on TV addresses the audience, you aren't actually able to hold conversations with them," Rouge pointed out.

"Oh. Yeah, that would make sense," Knuckles agreed. "They probably don't try to kill you, either."

"… Are you sure you want to keep that thing, Knux?" Sonic asked uncertainly.

"Are you kidding? There's no way I'd be able to get a deal as good as this one on a non-cursed TV!" Knuckles replied indignantly. "Plus, the cable bill would probably be astronomical. And don't even get me started on the reception."

"While I could probably rig something up for him, he makes a good point," Tails confessed.

"Wait wait wait. If Breaking the Fourth Wall is an actual real-life ability instead of something that just happens on TV or in books and games and the like, wouldn't that imply that WE'RE all fictional?" Asked an alarmed Vector.

They all took a long moment to consider this. From the looks on their faces, they didn't much like the implications. Sticks grimaced. "Oh boy. Okay, before anyone starts getting existential and contemplating the meaning of their existences or making declarations about how they're totally real people, control their own fate, their decisions are their own, they aren't being observed by millions of faceless individuals they'll never be able to meet, and their every thought and action totally aren't being dictated by some 30-year-old archivist using less than perfect voice-to-text software to try and avoid straining his hands, let's just move on to the important stuff, okay?"

"Wait, what was that last part?" asked a confused Sonic.

"Actually, I have a few questions-" Tails spoke up.

"MOVING ON," Sticks shouted.

…

"Oh, so that's what the fourth wall is," Sticks said after Athair finished telling her more or less what Tails had.

Athair nodded. "Yes, and we purposefully sought out you and others like you, individuals who have the potential to not only be aware of but break the fourth wall, because your ability to understand the truth of our reality makes you ideal for the sort of task we would ask of you. Since you have a better understanding than anyone else in your world of how things really are, you are much more aware of the kinds of reality-shattering threats which could conceivably threaten your existence, threats that wouldn't just destroy you, but erase you so thoroughly it would be as if you would never have existed. And it is for that reason we wish to ask you to join us, the Dominion."

…

"What, you mean that interstellar empire ruled by shapeshifters from Star Trek?" Asked a confused Vector.

"No relation," Sticks said testily.

"No offense, but that name doesn't exactly sound like what you would call a group of multiversal guardians," Blaze commented.

"That's what I said!" Sticks grumbled.

…

"… No offense, but that sounds more like the name for an evil empire than a group of multiversal guardians," Sticks said skeptically, growing wary of her hosts once again.

"No offense taken. The word 'Dominion' has two meanings," Athair explained. "One is sovereignty or control, while the other is the territory of a sovereign or government. We do not rule over the multiverse, but we do try and safeguard it. We position our agents on worlds that belong to them, and so could be considered their dominion. I admit, the name does have a somewhat negative connotation, but my Masters seemed really insistent on it for some reason, and trust me, it's not easy to change their minds."

"Oh," Sticks replied, uncertain.

The pterodactyl spread its wings, and a ring of 12 glowing symbols of different colors and shapes appeared before it. Several of the symbols shot off into the multiverse, many vanishing from sight but a few hovering around some of the universe-marbles. "As I've said before, we protect the multiverse by ensuring the stability and well-being of the 'Keystone' universes which support countless others. Our agents who guard those nodes are always locals, and all of them possess the 'fourth wall' ability, which they use to keep their homes safe, often without their friends and family knowing. However, every now and then a very special individual arises whose attunement to the cosmic truths of reality is so great that they have potential far outstripping all others in their world with a similar awareness. Whenever one of those special beings starts to waken into their true power, we seek them out and offer them the chance to be one of the 12 members of the Dominion who are fit to bear the 'Stigmata,' receiving vast cosmic powers beyond mortal comprehension and swearing to use them only to protect their worlds in the event of a catastrophe of existential proportions."

…

"What's a stigmata?" Cream asked.

"Stigmata is a term used by members of the Christian faith to describe body marks, sores, or sensations of pain in the locations corresponding to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ," Tails explained.

"The Ancient Walkers are Christian?" Asked a confused Mighty.

Rouge laughed. "Please, the Walkers _far_ predate that false-"

"Let's not open that can of worms," Shadow interrupted quickly.

"So what's the stigmata in this instance, then?" Blaze inquired.

"It's a special mark they put on my body that they used to infuse me with the infinite power of the cosmos," Sticks explained.

"Can we see it?" Charmy asked.

"No," the badger said flatly.

"Did it hurt getting it?" Cream asked in concern.

"Yes," Sticks said, still flat.

"O-oh," the rabbit said nervously.

…

"And I'm guessing you think I'm one of these 'special' individuals?" Sticks asked. "Because my fourth-wall awareness or whatever is higher than everyone else in my world?"

Athair nodded. "That's the gist of it, yes."

Sticks frowned. "Why 12? I mean, the multiverse is a pretty freaking big place, shouldn't you have more?"

"While 12 isn't an ideal number to cover the entire multiverse, remember that we do our best to ensure that each node universe has one of our agents protecting it," Athair explained. "And now, of course, you're wondering why we don't simply grant ALL of them unfathomable cosmic power, instead of just a few."

"Pretty much, yeah," Sticks admitted.

"We tried that in the past," Athair said with a grimace. "It didn't end well."

"No?" Sticks asked.

"People like us, as I'm sure you are more than well aware, are not exactly… Stable. Now, imagine if there were millions of people like you, and every single one of them had the power to reshape or completely reality as you know it," Athair told her.

Sticks did imagine it. She grimaced. "Yyyyyyeah, kinda see your point there. The damage was bad, I take it?"

"Let's just say that the multiverse used to be even BIGGER and leave it at that," Athair said flatly. Sticks winced. "The Walkers were eventually able to settle on 12 as the ideal number to bestow this power on. Just enough to be manageable, without having to worry about leaving the defenders of the multiverse underhanded. They also set a few other restrictions, like how they can't use their full power within their own universe, and, in fact, are not even AWARE that they possess this power unless they're 'triggered' by the handlers we assigned to them."

"Wait, you're saying that if I work for you guys, I have to be a sleeper agent?" Sticks asked, alarmed.

"Basically, yes," Athair admitted.

"And, given what you know about my feelings towards conspiracies and my own mind being compromised, I should agree to this because…?" Sticks asked pointedly.

"Would YOU trust yourself with having access to unfathomable cosmic power at your fingertips all the time and not worry that you'd abuse it or lose control of it?" Athair asked, equally pointed.

Sticks considered this. "Fair point," she conceded grudgingly.

"And aside from that, the powers you would receive are so great that if you were to overuse them even a little bit within your own world, you run the risk of destroying your universe completely, and all connected to it" Athair continued.

"If they're that dangerous, why give them out at all? Or just tone them down a bit?" Sticks inquired.

"That's been tried before in the past, as well," Athair explained. "And trust me when I say that against some of the things we go up against, this level of power is just the _bare minimum_ necessary to harm them."

"Yikes," the badger gulped.

The pterodactyl flapped its wings again, and faces started to form in some of the floating symbols, though others remained blank. Five of them, a man wearing a red mask with black rings around his white eyes; a man dressed like a green and yellow insect; some kind of pink pony; a man in blue full body armor with a yellow visor; and a blue-skinned bald man with small head spikes, glasses, and a beard looked at her and waved. Sticks awkwardly waved back. "If you were to join us, you would receive the title of '4th Dominion: Gaia's Sanctum.' We believe that the powers associated with this role are ideal for you. You are similar in temperament to the last person who wielded them."

Sticks blinked. "Wait, _last_ person? What happened to her?"

Athair hesitated, and then licked his lips nervously. "We, ah, don't know."

There was a pause. "You don't know," Sticks said flatly.

"No," Athair admitted.

"But… Aren't your bosses-" Sticks asked in confusion, glancing at the Ancient Walkers.

"Virtually omniscient beings capable of perceiving everything and everyone in the multiverse simultaneously? Yes," Athair finished.

"And they have no idea what happened to her," Sticks repeated.

"No, they don't," Athair confirmed.

"… That's fucking terrifying," Sticks said finally.

"Yes, it is," Athair agreed.

"And could something like that happen to me if I join your little club?!" Sticks demanded.

Athair sighed. "Sticks, I'm not going to lie to you. This job is not always the safest of careers."

"That's an understatement," the badger snorted.

"The forces we frequently combat are more dangerous than you are currently capable of imagining. Sometimes, Stigmata bearers can go their entire lives without having to call upon their powers to defend their worlds. Other times, they spend their entire lives fighting, and meet a messy, unpleasant end," Athair said bluntly. "Or, in the case of your predecessor, experience a fate so incomprehensible even we don't know what happened. Great power may come with great responsibility, but with great responsibility comes great risks, and no guarantee that you'll live to old age."

"Not exactly selling your case here," Sticks said flatly.

"However, as dangerous a job as this is, it's still one that absolutely needs to be done," Athair continued. "Without the hard work and yes, often sacrifices, of those who have come before you, the world as you know it would not exist. You've said that you don't care about protecting the people of the multiverse, people you've never met before and who have never met you. That's understandable. But can you honestly tell me that there's nobody in your world that you would not give everything to protect? Nobody you care about enough to risk everything to make sure they continue to breathe?"

"In case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly a popular person back home," Sticks said unhappily.

"Maybe not, but there are still people whose lives you've made a difference to," Athair pointed out. "People who have a better chance of survival thanks to your actions so far. People who care about you. Can you truly tell me that you don't care enough about them to save them from a terrible fate, if it were in your power to do so?"

Sticks wanted to tell him that no, she didn't. But she knew that was a lie. There were the seahorses of Undersealandia, who'd been so grateful for her actions in rescuing Eddard and saving their city they'd made a statue of her, promised to patrol the seas and eliminate conspiracies in her name, and even offered a place for her in their realm if the surface world ever turned on her. There were the snails, who had believed in her and trusted her to be their savior, who had encouraged her to go to the surface to prevent the Froglodytes from escaping the underground realm, even if it meant they themselves might die without her there to lead them.

And her parents… Were they still alive? Had they bought return tickets back from the vacation and come home only to find a smoldering ruin, and no sign of either their children? Did they think she was dead? She'd been so afraid to find out, that she hadn't bothered trying to look, for fear of what the answer might be. Although her childhood before the jungle was so long ago she could barely remember it, she knew that she had loved them, and they had loved her.

But did she love them enough to do this?

"If I say no," she said finally. "What happens?"

"As I promised, we will send you back to your island, with a significant boost to your pre-existing fourth wall abilities as well as an unlimited supply of tinfoil hats," Athair told her. "And you shall have no memory that any of this happened. You will remain blissfully unaware of the greater multiverse, and the greater dangers that threaten it."

"And what will happen to my world?" She asked.

"It will not go undefended, if that's what you're asking. As I said before, there are many on your world that has a degree of fourth wall power. We will reach out to them, and one of them will agree to join us. Someone always does," Athair informed her.

"And will any of them be able to wield this Stigma thingy?" Sticks asked.

"Stigmata. And no. People like you, with an affinity for the flow of the cosmos strong enough to be able to accept the Stigmata and its power, are incredibly rare, only appearing once every hundred million generations," Athair explained.

"So someone will protect my world, but they won't be able to protect it as well as I could," Sticks stated.

Athair nodded. "That is correct."

Sticks thought of the unknowable fate that had befallen the last person to hold the rank of Fourth Dominion. She thought of the darkness that had engulfed the multiverse, and of the gaping hole that had been left behind when Athair had removed that single marble. She thought of the people in her life that she had some modicum of affection for, and imagined them being snuffed out as easily as all those countless universes had. Most them probably wouldn't even know it was happening until it was too late, and they ceased to exist. Some might say was more merciful that way. Sticks, on the other hand, would rather know her death when she saw it rather than be taken by surprise.

And so it was, finally, that she asked, "If I do this, will I be in a better position to prevent the upcoming robot apocalypse?"

"And all the others, yes," Athair said.

She sighed. "Fuck. Fine. I'll do it."

"Are you absolutely certain?" Athair asked. "Because once you make this decision, there is no going back. You will bear the Stigmata, and all the power and burden that comes with it, until the day you die. And like I said, it might not necessarily be a peaceful death."

"I'm a wild girl with a tendency to battle conspiracies and get wrapped up in insane adventures. I was never going to have a peaceful death," Sticks said bitterly. "Do it. Make me a stigmatist or whatever before I can change my mind."

"Very well," Athair said, bowing his head. The pterodactyl flapped its wings, and all but one of the symbols disappeared. "Sticks the Badger," the echidna proclaimed as the symbol, a complex mandala of green leaves and vines, floated towards her. "We offer you the role of Fourth Dominion: Gaia's Sanctum. Do you accept this role, and everything that comes with it?"

"Yeah. I do," Sticks said grimly.

Athair glanced at the Ancient Walkers, who all raised their appendages. Energy started crackling around them, and their forms wavered, the shallow illusions making up their bodies beginning to give way to something… Else, something greater, something unfathomable. The symbol before Sticks began to glow brighter and brighter as power rippled off of it, warping the air around it and sending tremors down her back. Without warning, it shot towards her, pressing itself into her body and causing her to scream louder then she'd ever screamed before as every single quark in her body flared up in agonizing, incomprehensible _pain_ …

"Welcome to the Dominion, Sticks."

And then, she saw _everything._

…

"What happened after that is not a tale that I can put into words. Nor should I," Sticks said solemnly to her enraptured audience. "I spent a while in that realm, being trained and educated in how to use my power. Maybe an eternity or two. They introduced me to my handler, Perci, and bonded me to her so that whenever I was needed, she would be able to 'awaken' me so that I could use my true powers in defense of my world. Once we'd finally finished, my memories were sealed, and we were sent back to my universe, only moments after I'd left it…"

"Wait, they dumped you back in the Bermuda triangle?" Amy interjected, startled.

"What? No! That would be stupid!" Sticks cried, indignant. "They dropped us off at Seaside Island."

…

"Hey. Hey! Are you all right?"

"Huh? Wh…whuzzat?" Sticks groaned, staring blearily at the world as she woke up to find the sun blazing in her eyes and causing her head to explode in pain, though thankfully an incredibly beautiful lavender-furred bandicoot leaned into view to block out the sun, earning her Sticks' undying adoration. She expressed this by screaming at the top of her lungs, flailing her arms wildly, and scurrying back across the sand (oh, so she was on a beach) in alarm. "Who the heck are you?! What did you do to me?!"

"Whoa, chill," the bandicoot stated she took a step back, raising her hands at non-threateningly. She had a short pale peach muzzle, a thin tail, a short brown snout, and possessed shoulder-length hair that resembled hedgehog quills with violet tips and a few bangs on her forehead. Her attire consisted of a red scarf around the back of her head, a purple, sleeveless hoodie with torn shoulders, a white undershirt, brown and fingerless gloves, brown straps around her upper arms, amethyst jeans and tan boots with fluffy white cuffs and strings for bands. She carried a belt around her waist with a Wrench holstered on it. "I didn't do anything to you. I found you here washed up on the beach just a second ago. Are you okay?"

Sticks grunted as she managed to sit up, rubbing her aching head and squinting as the far-to-bright sunlight pierced her eyes. "About as okay as someone who just washed up on a beach could be, I guess. Where the heck am I?"

"Seaside Island," the bandicoot told her. "I know, I know, it's kind of a redundant name, but we aren't very good at naming things around here. Heck, the town I come from is called 'Unnamed Village!'"

Sticks blinked in surprise. "Seaside Island? That's where I was trying to go! Huh, a dimensional vortex must've spit me out right here. How oddly convenient." She frowned. Things rarely conveniently happened favorably towards her.

"Dimensional vortex?" The bandicoot asked in confusion.

"I got sucked into the Bermuda triangle on my way here after saving an undersea civilization of intelligent seahorses living on the back of a giant crab from a horde of whale Pirates led by an evil whale God with the help of a not-as-evil shark God," Sticks explained.

"Huh. Neat," the bandicoot commented.

Sticks glared at the bandicoot. "If you don't believe me, just say so. You don't need to humor me."

The bandicoot shrugged. "Well, it does sound pretty outlandish, but our town is routinely attacked by a rotund mad scientist at least once a week and gets repelled by a hedgehog that can run really fast, a Fox who can somehow fly, another hedgehog with a big hammer, and an incredibly stupid echidna, so I suppose anything's possible."

Sticks regarded the bandicoot warily. She seemed nice and reasonable, but by this point Sticks was far too suspicious of people trying to be friendly to her just accept her off the bat. "I've seen weirder."

"I believe it. What's your name?" The bandicoot asked curiously.

"Who's asking?!" Sticks snarled, her hackles rising.

"Perci the bandicoot," the bandicoot said calmly.

"… Sticks the Badger," Sticks said grudgingly.

Perci smiled, making her face look even lovelier. "Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, Sticks. Do you need medical attention? I could take you to town, though admittedly I'm not entirely sure I trust our Doctor…"

"I don't do towns," Sticks grunted, getting to her feet and brushing the sand off her legs. "Thanks but no thanks, I can find my way home from here."

Perci shrugged. "Well, if you're sure. Still, I hope you change your mind. It'd be nice seeing someone like you in town. You know, if you really have done crazy things like you said you did, those Village defenders I mentioned earlier might be able to make use of someone with your talents."

"Yeah, don't count on it," Sticks said, turning and heading for the jungle.

"Think it over," Perci called to Sticks. "Oh, and if you _do_ come to town, don't eat at Meh Burger if you can help it, I'm not entirely sure the stuff they serve there is actually food. Also, you should keep an eye out for my identical twin sister Staci, she's as evil as I am good."

Sticks paused, and then glanced back over her shoulder, an eyebrow raised in skepticism. "Really? You have an evil twin?"

Perci chuckled. "Nah. If anything I'd say that, if I were—hypothetically speaking, of course—a servant of good, she'd be a servant of…well, chaos."

Sticks found herself thinking of her own brother briefly. She didn't think about him often. It hurt too much. "Whatever," the badger grumbled, turning away again and stomping off in the direction of her burrow. "I might come into town if I really need to, but don't hold your breath."

Perci's smile didn't fade as the badger vanished into the jungle. "Oh, I get the feeling I'll be seeing you a lot more than you might think in the future… Fourth Dominion."

…

"Wait, I'm confused. I thought you said your memories of being some interdimensional cosmic superhero were sealed when you returned home. How are you able to talk to us about them now?" Asked a perplexed Rouge.

"Well, she said that she was in the middle of a great battle for the fate of the multiverse before coming here. Maybe the threat was great enough that her memories and powers were unsealed to deal with it?" Blaze suggested.

"Huh? What are you talking about? What memories and powers?" Sticks asked in confusion.

Everyone looked at her, bewildered. "The… The super powers granted to you by my ancestor and a bunch of dinosaurs in cool masks? The ones you just spent the last several minutes talking about?" Knuckles said, befuddled.

"I have no idea what you're talking. I think if I'd met your ancestor and a bunch of dinosaurs in cool masks, I would remember it," Sticks said suspiciously.

"But… But you just told us about all that! And there was a big flashback and everything!" Protested a confused Mighty.

"No there wasn't," Sticks said.

"Yes there was!" Mighty protested.

"Yeah, and there were marbles, and freaky tattoos, and cool visual effects, and I'm pretty sure one of the characters from Espio's favorite show was in there for some reason," Charmy recalled.

"Sh-shut up," the chameleon hissed.

"Seriously guys, I don't know you're talking about. Usually when someone isn't making sense around here, it's me!" Sticks said, folding her arms and frowning at them.

"But you just got finished telling us about it! And how that really hot bandicoot is actually your handler or something!" Vector insisted.

"What hot bandicoot?" Sticks asked, dumbfounded.

"Perci!" The crocodile yelled.

"What? Don't be ridiculous, Perci's not my handler! She's just some girl I run into now and then. And why would I need a handler? I'm not a secret agent or anything like that. I'm a free spirit! Well, except when I work together with my friends, that is," Sticks conceded. "Which is often. But still!"

"But… But!" Vector stammered.

"Grunkle Shadow, I don't understand. She just told us about all that. Why she acting like she didn't?" Cream asked the black hedgehog.

"I'm… Not actually sure," Shadow confessed.

"Maybe she's actually just completely insane?" Silver sneered.

"Dude, what is your problem with her?" Sonic asked, getting irritated.

"She showed up out of the blue just as I was about to embark on my incredibly important mission to save all of time and space and started telling us some incredibly cockamamie story about all the preposterous things she has allegedly done over the course of her life when all of us have more important things to do! I think I'm fully justified in having a problem with her!" Silver snapped back.

"Maybe the seal on her memories is imperfect? It's possible she remembers the truth some of the time, but the rest, she doesn't?" Tails suggested.

"Or, more likely, she's completely insane!" Silver stated again.

"I'm starting to think you guys are the insane ones. I honestly have no idea what you're talking about," Sticks complained.

"You JUST told us!" Vector bellowed.

"And for the last time, NO I DIDN'T!" she bellowed back.

Blaze sighed. "This is getting us nowhere."

Amy gasped and snapped her fingers. "Wait, I know! Omega, you're recording everything, aren't you?"

"WHAT? NO-I-AM-NOT. WHY-WOULD-YOU-EVER-THINK-I-WOULD-DO-SOMETHING-LIKE-THAT?" Omega denied very unconvincingly.

"Because if you're streaming all of this, it only stands to reason that you're recording it as well for blackmail purposes," Blaze pointed out.

"… DAMMIT. YOU-GOT-ME-THERE," Omega admitted grudgingly.

"Wait a minute, he's been recording and streaming all this?! People all over the world know about me and my history?! I KNEW he was evil! I'm gonna kill him!" Sticks screamed angrily, whipping out a staff.

"No, wait, hold on! This can prove what we've been trying to tell you!" Amy insisted quickly. "Omega, play back everything she said about how she encountered Athair and the Ancient Walkers and became a Guardian of the multiverse!"

"I-WOULD-LOVE-TO… IF-I-HAD-ANY-IDEA-WHAT-YOU-WERE-TALKING-ABOUT," said the confused Omega.

"Oh, come on!" Vector yelled indignantly, throwing up his hands in exasperation.

Shadow frowned. "Omega, we've been talking about this for the last several minutes. You have no memory of it at all?"

"NO, I-DO-NOT," Omega reported. "OTHER-THAN-YOU-ALL-SAYING-IT-HAPPENED, ANYWAY."

"… Okay, this is getting a little worrying. Just Sticks not remembering is weird, but Omega too?" Tails murmured, concerned. "Something fishy is going on."

"Omega, run a diagnostic on your memory banks," Rouge ordered.

"ACKNOWLEDGED." Omega's eyes flashed briefly. "THAT-IS…ODD."

"What is?" Blaze asked instantly.

"THERE-IS-A-SIGNIFICANT-DISCREPANCY-IN-MY-SHORT-TERM-MEMORY-STORAGE. AS-IF-EVERYTHING-FOR-A-SEVERAL-MINUTE-SPAN-WAS-ERASED-WITHOUT-MY-KNOWLEDGE. CONSIDERING-MY-FIREWALLS, THAT-SHOULD-NOT-BE-POSSIBLE," the robot reported. "SIMILARLY, MY-STREAMING-FEED-HAS-BEEN-INTERRUPTED-FOR-A-PERIOD-OF-TIME-PRECISELY-MATCHING-THIS-DISCREPANCY-IN-MY-MEMORY-BANKS. WHILE-NORMALLY-THIS-COULD-BE-CHALKED-UP-TO-A-FAILURE-IN-MY-WI-FI, CONSIDERING-THE-MEMORY-ISSUE-IT-IS-MORE-LIKELY-THAT-SOMEONE-DID-NOT-WANT-ME-TO-REMEMBER-THE-LAST-SEVERAL-MINUTES, NOR-ALLOW-THE-REST-OF-THE-WORLD-TO-KNOW-WHAT-WAS-BEING-SAID-DURING-THOSE-MINUTES." There was a pause. "ALARMINGLY, MY-FEED-WENT-DOWN-AGAIN-THE-MINUTE I-STARTED-TALKING-ABOUT-THIS. I-AM-RUNNING-A-VIRUS-SCAN-AND-CHECKING-FOR-ANY-SECURITY-BREACHES, BUT-SO-FAR-I-AM-NOT-DETECTING-ANY-KIND-OF-TAMPERING… AND-YET, SUCH-TAMPERING-MUST-HAVE-OCCURRED."

"… Okay, that's fucking spooky," Charmy said after a moment, clearly startled.

"What the heck is going on?" Asked a disturbed Sonic.

"It sounds as if someone or something doesn't want the rest of the world knowing about the people Sticks works for," Silver observed. He grimaced. "And now I'm starting to sound like her. Wonderful."

"But who could possibly do that?" Cream asked, worried.

"The Ancient Walkers," Blaze stated.

Rouge nodded in agreement. "Yes, if I were them, I wouldn't exactly want people going around blabbing information about them to anyone who might listen."

"But then why haven't they erased our memories, too?" Amy asked.

"I don't know, but perhaps we should quickly change the subject before they decide to correct this oversight?" Espio suggested anxiously.

"That is an incredibly good idea," Knuckles agreed. "Hey, Sticks! Moving on from this completely unimportant topic, what did you do after getting back to your island?"

"Huh? Well, I returned to my burrow, of course," said the confused badger.

"MY-FEED-IS-BACK-UP," Omega reported. "IT-SEEMS-AS-IF-YOU-WERE-ON-THE-RIGHT-TRACK."

"Let's keep it that way," Tails said quickly. "And what did you do when you got home?"

"Well, after I chased out the squatters and fixed the place up again to my liking, I prepared to begin my life of solitary vigilance, guarding the Gateway to the Froglodytes caverns and preparing for the upcoming fight against the robot Apocalypse, the illuminati, and every other evil group that I knew intended to take over or destroy the world," Sticks recounted. "But then I got bored, and, despite my best judgment, wound up wandering into town to see what it was like."

…

"So, this is Unnamed Village," Sticks observed, glancing around the town. It seemed pleasant enough, with lots of huts made of wood with thatched conical roofs, a few larger buildings made totally out of stone, several storefronts, a waterwheel, and lots of palm trees providing shade for benches and tables. Various anthropomorphic animal people like her were wandering around, going about their day. "Seems… Nice. Kinda open to attack, though. I mean, seriously, I didn't see even a single booby-trap or defense system on the way in!"

"Yeah, we used to have some but the mayor cut funding to them so he could buy a new yacht," a familiar lavender bandicoot commented as she walked up. "Hey, Sticks. Was wondering if I'd see you again."

"Yeah, well, don't make a big deal out of it, I'm not going to be here for long," Sticks grunted. "Just wanted to check the place out." She hesitated, and then gave the bandicoot a suspicious look. "Wait, you _are_ Perci, right? Not her twin sister?"

"Yes, I am, though granted, if I were Staci I probably lie to you and tell you that I was Perci because that's the sort of thing she gets off on," Perci said with a good-natured chuckle. "But let's say for argument's sake that I am, indeed, Perci. Or, if you like, you can assume that I'm actually Staci and trying to fool you and remain completely suspicious of everything I say or do while I'm here."

"Oh, way ahead of you on that, sister," Sticks assured her.

"Cool. So, while you're here, want a tour?" Perci offered.

"Well, suppose it can't hurt to get the lay of the land," Sticks admitted grudgingly. "All right, but I've got my eye on you!"

"Well, of course you would, how else would you be able to follow me?" Perci pointed out. "Come on, let me show you around."

And so for the next hour so, Sticks followed Perci as she showed her all of the town's most interesting features, such as the build-it-yourself furniture store…

"Why don't they just give you the furniture premade?"

"Because the store owners get a sick pleasure out of watching their customers try and fail to build the furniture themselves and have to shell out extra for help putting it together because an important part just so happens to be missing. A part, coincidentally, that whoever they send over to help build it just so happens to have on hand."

"Devious."

The library…

"Almost everyone hates this place."

"Really? Why?"

"Too quiet, no TV."

"Huh. I'm actually not that fond of libraries myself, mainly because I'm pretty sure most of what's written in 'em is lies. And the pages are coated with a substance that makes people dumber and more susceptible to doing whatever they're told."

"…I'd say that's ridiculous, but considering the average education level and gullibility of the townspeople these days…"

The television studio…

"This is where most of our shows and programs are filmed and broadcast, including local comedian and celebrity, Comedy Chimp."

"Is he funny?"

"Not really."

"Eh, I don't watch TV anyway. Too many subliminal mind-control waves."

"Trust me, Comedy Chimp's attempts at humor are way too obvious for that. I don't think he even knows what subtlety means."

The DangerCo Deadly Equipment Warehouse…

"This is where all the supervillains in the tri-Village area by their equipment and weapons."

"That… Sounds like an absolutely horrible idea! Who the heck would approve something that stupid?!"

"The mayor thought it would improve the town's revenue. It did, but on a completely unrelated note our insurance rates are now through the roof, so it didn't really make much of a difference."

"What an idiot."

"Yeah, he's probably the worst politician our village has ever had. Unfortunately, nobody actually cares enough to run against him, so he's pretty much unopposed."

"And this is why I'm an anarchist."

"Given the current political state in most of the world these days, I don't blame you."

Town Hall…

"Speaking of our least favorite politician, this is where he works. It also doubles as his mansion, the town courthouse, and is usually where we hold special events or classes."

"Pretty multifunctional for a seat of government corruption."

"Yeah, well, it's the biggest building in town, so it has to do a lot of extra duty. Oh, it's also the power station, but that's supposed to be secret, so you didn't hear from me. As such, if you feel like blowing it up, I would advise against it if you don't want the whole town going into a panic due to loss of power."

"What kind of anarchist you think I am? I don't blow up buildings! Well, not unless there's evil robots inside of them or anything."

"…Uh, right. Well. Moving on…"

The marketplace…

"And this is where you'd go if you have anything you need to buy, like groceries, television, other stuff…."

"Considering that I can get most of my food in the wild, I doubt I'd ever have a reason to ever get anything from here. Also I don't have any money."

"Hmm, that is a problem. A shame, even if the prices can be bit… Much, there are some surprisingly nice things here. Like the spa and cosmetics shop, for instance."

"You know, I've always wondered, why is it that people charge tons of money for a mud bath when there's tons of free mud out in the wilderness?"

"A riddle for the ages, I suppose."

The post office…

"And this is where we go whenever we want to send a letter or package, or spend ages in line waiting to complain about a letter or package getting misdelivered."

"Why is the mailman a turtle? Not to sound racist or anything, but aren't they incredibly slow?"

"It's a visual metaphor for how incompetent and poorly-run the post system is."

"Ah."

The town jail…

"We hardly ever use this place. Not because we rarely get crime, but because it's ridiculously easy to break out of. My sister's been in and out of there more times than I can count."

"I can tell its rubbish just by looking at it. I've escaped more secure government facilities then this."

"Yeah, but I hear they might do some renovation in the future. Might be a bit tougher to break out of."

"Yeah, well, we'll see about that."

The youth center…

"This place gets threatened with closure or demolition, actually closed or demolished, then reopened and rebuilt several times a month. It's getting to the point the youth are lucky to actually get a chance to use the place."

"Won't anyone ever think of the children?"

"No."

And last but unfortunately least, Meh Burger.

"Behold, Meh Burger. The food is terrible and the service is even worse. Complaint forms are used as spare napkins, there's an actual code of conduct which is never followed, few of the meals actually contain real food and not even wild animals want to eat them, and the toys are so cheaply made with such sharp corners they're actually health hazards. Also the intern who runs the joint is literally the worst. Not even my sister will touch him, and you wouldn't believe some of the guys she's dated. Most people who've eaten here compared it to a dump or a rat hole, but then decided that was offensive to dumps or rat holes."

"Sounds horrible."

"It is. And yet, astonishingly, it's insanely successful. Mainly because it's literally the only place in town, so nobody really has anywhere else to go. Rumor has it they've got a VIP area in back where they serve food that's actually good, but naturally it's inaccessible to the likes of us."

"Tch. Typical elitist classism."

"Pretty much. So," Perci said, turning to Sticks. "Now that you've seen the village, what do you think of it?"

"Honestly, I like it even less than I did when I first got here," Sticks complained.

Perci grimaced. "Yeah, that's fair. Still, at least we aren't the Gogobas."

"Gogo-whats?" Sticks asked in confusion.

"Trust me, you're better off not knowing." Glancing over Sticks' shoulder, Perci's eyes widened in interest. "Before you decide to head off back to the jungle and never return, you might want to check this out."

"Huh?" Sticks turned around and saw that nearby were four individuals seated at a table with bored and irritated looks on their faces, a banner stating 'United Village Defenders of the Village Tryouts' hanging above their heads.

One was a blue hedgehog with a pair of white gloves with cuffs and a pair of red sneakers with white cuffs, grey soles, and a rectangular gold buckle on top, along with white sports tape wrapped around the palms of his gloves, the heels of his sneakers, and his lower forearms and legs, and a brown neckerchief. Strapped to his wrist was a gray triangular device with round corners and a black touchpad with a cyan outline of a triangle with an extra cyan outline around each corner in the middle of it.

Next to him was a yellow Fox with two tails, a pair of brown goggles with orange lenses on his head, a brown work belt with a strap around his shoulder and a small buckle adorned with a signature symbol, and white medium-long gloves with no cuffs. He also wore red sneakers with white toes and cuffs, which had white sports tape wrapped around the middle, and a golden circular bezel with small red and green wires on the side and a yellow touchpad wrapped around his wrist.

Next to him was another hedgehog, this one pink, with a red hairband and a red one-piece top with a white collar, yellow buttons on her left side and a lavender sarashi around her waist. She also wore white gloves, purple sports tape and golden ring bracelets around her wrists, purple stockings, and red-violet shoes with pink soles and toes, gray straps and pink plate with two yellow buttons on top. On her wrist was a lightbulb-shaped golden pad with a white underside. Its lower half had three dark pink buttons with a white circle on the top one, and on the upper half was a circular pink touchpad with a white frame and light purple semi-circles along the upper edges.

Finally, there was a red… Creature with a rather large torso, broad shoulders and thick muscular arms, making him very top-heavy, with long legs and dreadlocks. There was a white, crescent moon-shaped mark near the top of his chest. He was wearing a pair of red and yellow shoes designed with wrap-like markings that had green cuffs and grey metal plates on top. He also wore gloves with knuckle-spikes on them and had white sports tape wrapped around his hands, the lower half of his arms and legs, and his biceps. Around his wrist was a dark gray square with a touchpad made up of a smaller red square with a gray frame, and on each side was a small red rectangular plate.

…

"Wait a second, is that… Us?" Amy asked, surprised.

"It must be. Who else could it be?" Tails pointed out.

"Yeah, though we seem to have a different sense of taste. What's with all the sports tape?" Sonic wondered.

"And why's the other me so much taller and top-heavy?" Knuckles asked.

"Because he performs almost exclusive upper-body exercises," Sticks explained.

"… Why?" Shadow questioned.

Sticks shrugged.

…

"Who are those guys?" Sticks asked. "And who's the red guy? Never seen anyone like him before."

"Those are the local heroes I mentioned, the ones who protect the village because the mayor cheaped out on security systems and the police force," Perci explained. "Sonic, Tails, Amy Rose, and Knuckles. Knuckles is an echidna."

"An echidna? I thought those were extinct," Sticks commented, surprised.

"He's apparently the last of his kind. He spent most of his life living by himself on Angel Island, until he lost it," Perci told her.

"Lost what?" Sticks asked in confusion.

"The island," Perci said.

There was a pause. "How do you lose an island?!" Sticks asked, incredulous.

"He's not very bright," Perci said bluntly.

…

Everyone looked at Knuckles. "Don't. Even. Start," he snarled through gritted teeth.

…

"Looks like they're having tryouts. I forgot they were doing that today," Perci commented as the four heroes waved away someone who'd been talking at them in frustration. "Doesn't look like it's going so well."

"Tryouts?" Sticks inquired.

"Yeah, the mayor decided to reduce their stipend if they can't get a fifth team member," Perci explained. "So they're holding tryouts to try and find a fifth person to join the team. Unfortunately, pretty much everyone in the village is too weak, apathetic, and/or stupid, otherwise we wouldn't even need them in the first place."

"What about you? You don't seem like any of those things," Sticks commented.

Perci smiled. "I'm flattered you think that way. My family has actually been protecting this region for generations. We're kind of the only ones who do anything around here because, like I said before, everyone else is too lazy and useless. Heroism is sort of a tradition for us; even my sister is more chaotic than actually evil, and we've got some cousins on a different island who routinely battle a mad scientist with a comically large head and an evil tiki mask or something. However, I can't join them because I have… Let's say, other obligations. As I'm sure you know, the world is a big place, and there are things out there a lot worse than some mad scientist showing up to destroy the village at least once a week. The Last Ancient is due to return any month now… My sister and I are part of the reason Eggman is usually the _worst_ thing the people here have to deal with."

"What, he's not that bad?" Sticks asked in confusion.

"If unchecked, yes, but most of the time he's more of a nuisance," Perci said. "It's the times he's _not_ that you have to worry about. Say, maybe you should try out!"

"What?! No way! I don't do well with other people, why the heck would I do that?!" Sticks protested.

"Come on, it could be fun!" Perci insisted. "You could make some friends, have an excuse to get out of that burrow of yours once in a while… Plus, I bet they could use your expertise. If you really did thwart a robot Apocalypse, I bet your experience would come in handy fighting against Doctor Eggman's myriad automatons."

Sticks hesitated. "Automatons? Wait, this Eggman guy uses robots?"

Perci nodded. "Oh yeah, tons of them, and giant mechanized battle suits and vehicles, too!"

The badger cringed. "By tons, do you mean, say, enough to potentially cause a robot Apocalypse?"

Perci considered this. "Well, maybe a small-scale one, but given he always seems to have more of them waiting on standby whenever he feels in the mood to cause some trouble, if he really ramped up production and somehow lost control of them, maybe?"

Dammit. Sticks sighed. "Well played, Perci. Well played. That is, if you really _are_ Perci and not Staci?"

The bandicoot smiled enigmatically. "You will never know for sure."

"Yeah, yeah," Sticks grumbled as she grouchily stomped towards the desk, where the four heroes were currently talking to an ox.

"So, Mike, do you have… Any special talents? Any sort of powers or combat skills that might prove useful against Doctor Eggman's robot horde?" Sonic asked dubiously, as if he didn't really expect a useful answer.

Mike the ox considered this for moment. "Well, no, not really. I run a pet shop and everyday store, but aside from that, I'm pretty average in every way imaginable. I guess you could say I'm just a guy."

Sonic sighed. "Yeah, that's about what I figured."

"We're sorry, but we're not sure you're _quite_ what we're looking for," Amy said apologetically.

Mike shrugged good-naturedly. "Yeah, I figured as much. We still going to the movie later, Knuckles?"

"You know it!" the echidna said cheerfully.

Tails groaned as the ox left. "This really isn't going well, guys. Barely anyone's applied, and none of them are qualified!"

"The only person who had any sort of special talent was Fastidious Beaver," Sonic complained. "And I don't think correcting someone's grammar is ever going to prove useful in a combat situation."

"This is terrible," Amy complained. "If we can't get a fifth team member, the mayor's going to severely reduce our stipend!"

Knuckles gasped. "Oh no! I have no idea what that means."

"It means we'll be getting paid less for saving the village, meaning we won't be able to afford to pay the rent on our houses or buy groceries or anything else important," Tails explained.

"Oh," the echidna said. "Wait, we get paid?"

"… Wait, what did you think those checks they've been giving us were for?" Sonic asked in confusion.

"What's a check?" Knuckles asked.

"Shh, someone's coming!" Amy hissed as Sticks approached. "Hi there!" She said with a too-wide smile. "I don't think we've seen you around here before. Are you new to the village?"

"Well, this my first time here, but I've actually been living just outside the village by myself for a while now," Sticks admitted. "The name's Sticks. Sticks the Badger."

Sonic stirred that. "Sticks? Hey, are YOU that hermit everyone's been talking about?"

"Everyone's been talking about me?!" Sticks shrieked, panicking. "I don't like it when people talk about me! What are they saying?"

"That you're a crazy lady who's been rummaging through people's garbage, setting inconvenient traps all over the place, and yelling at kids to get off her lawn?" Knuckles spoke up.

"Knuckles!" Amy hissed.

"What? That's what they've been saying," the echidna protested.

"Yeah, that about sums me up," Sticks admitted.

"So, what brings you into town?" Tails asked.

"Boredom, mainly. But I hear you guys need a fifth team member or something?" Sticks asked.

"As a matter fact, we do!" Amy said eagerly. "What sort of experience and special skills do you have that might come in handy fighting a mad scientist and his endless horde of evil robots?"

"Excellent survival skills and self-taught hand-to-hand combat skills due to spending almost my entire life fitting for myself in the wilderness, leadership and guerrilla tactics from single-handedly leading a civilization of underground snails against their wicked frog oppressors, resistance to torture and interrogation thanks to spending a significant amount of time being held prisoner by aliens and the government, and saved an underwater city of seahorses living on the back of a giant crab from getting destroyed by whale Pirates and a wicked whale God with the help of a giant shark," Sticks recalled. "Also, I thwarted a robot Apocalypse, which means fighting an Army of robots should be a piece of cake."

Everyone stared at her blankly for a moment. Sticks started fidgeting. _They don't believe me. What was I thinking?! This was a stupid idea, I should never have listened to Perci-_

"Well, she's got my vote!" Knuckles spoke up suddenly.

Sticks' eyes lit up. "You mean you believe me?"

"Yeah, that sounds awesome!" Knuckles said enthusiastically. "You'd be a big asset to my team!"

"Okay, first of all, it's _my_ team, not yours-" Sonic said in exasperation.

"I don't remember voting on that," Amy muttered.

"Second, you have a habit of believing every single cockamamie story and lie that you come across," the blue hedgehog continued.

"I do not!" Knuckles said indignantly.

"One of our applicants was Eggman in disguise, claiming his name was Steve," Sonic said flatly.

"… It was a really cunning disguise!" Knuckles protested.

"HE WAS WEARING A WIG!" Sonic shouted.

"And a rather ugly one, at that," Tails commented.

…

Everyone glanced at Knuckles. "So, did Eggman ever-" Sonic started.

"I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT."

…

"You also thought that one guy dressed as a tree was a chameleon," Amy added.

"If he's not a chameleon, then why would he call himself that?!" Knuckles insisted in frustration.

Sticks' heart sank. "Does that mean you don't believe me?"

"Well, I wouldn't go that far," Amy said diplomatically, which of course meant that she didn't believe her at all. "But those do sound like rather tall claims. I don't suppose you have any proof of these adventures?"

Sticks grimaced. The seahorses had given her a sizable amount of treasure upon leaving their city, but it must've all been lost when she got sucked into the Bermuda triangle. "Other than a few scars and rather awkward places, no, not really. My exploits haven't exactly been the stuff of headlines, namely due to the great media conspiracy covering them up."

"I see," the pink hedgehog said. Sticks winced.

"Is there anything else you can tell us that might convince us to take you on?" Tails asked politely.

"Not likely," Sonic grumbled.

"To be fair, she doesn't seem nearly as useless as pretty much every other applicant we've had," Amy muttered back. "Don't you see the way she carries herself? Even if what he says is implausible, she's clearly seen SOME action, which is more than can be said for pretty much everyone else in town." Sonic frowned at this, considering.

Sticks' mind raced desperately, trying to think of something, anything that might convince them to take her on without making her sound like even more of a madwoman than she already no doubt was in their eyes. "Well… Um… I can throw a boomerang?" She said finally, cringing as she said it, immediately knowing it was the wrong thing to say. Again, why did she think this was a good idea?! Oh wait, she hadn't. Stupid Perci.

Much to her surprise, all four heroes sat up at this. "Show us," Sonic insisted.

Sticks blinked. "Uh, okay." She drew her boomerang and looked around, trying to spot a good target. She noticed that, some distance away, some walrus kid was jumping up and down trying to reach a low hanging fruit in a tree overhead, but it was just out of reach and a well-dressed female walrus who was no doubt his mother was too busy chasing after her infant, crying, "MY BABY!" to help her other son.

Smirking, Sticks through her boomerang. It arced through the air, making a lovely whistling noise as it spun, before slicing through the stem of the fruit and dropping it right into the hands of the delighted child.

It didn't stop there, however, and continued on its way as a snickering weasel bandit ran away from an elderly Wolf lady, who was screaming, "Stop, thief! Give me back my purse at once!"

"Not a chance, granny—what?" The weasel cried in surprise as the boomerang snagged on the strap of the purse, whipping it out of his hands.

The boomerang twirled and arced back around, the purse slipping off of its end and landing in the hands of the old woman. "Oh, thank you, thank you, strange mystery boomerang!" She cried happily.

The boomerang did not reply, for it was an inanimate object.

"And so, with these oversized ceremonial scissors, I hereby declare this new giant scissor factory open," a relatively short egg-shaped anthropomorphic mouse with grey fur, pink skin, bright blue eyes, round ears, a long naked tail, a bare belly, short legs, a chubby bare muzzle with a medium-long black nose and a grey mustache wearing an extremely narrow cream top hat with a green band, a cream jacket, an asparagus shirt with white collar and yellow rings, white gloves, a green-yellow neckerchief, and asparagus shoes with white gaiters around them declared to a crowd gathered around a large building as he prepared to cut the ribbon in front of it with a pair of oversized scissors. "Now if these would just … Unfh!… Cut…" He grunted, struggling to close the scissors around the ribbon.

Without warning, the boomerang flew by, slicing through the ribbon with ease. The gathered villagers cheered. The mouse scowled. "Oh great, take away 50 percent of my job from me. Those blasted machines are stealing more and more jobs by the day…"

…

"I'm guessing that was the mayor?" Mighty asked.

Sticks nodded. "Yep. Worst one the town's ever had."

"He didn't look so bad," Cream commented.

"You might think differently if you ever had to listen to one of his speeches," the badger complained.

"Just how bad is he, really?" Sonic asked.

"During his most recent reelection campaign, he got a -10 percent approval rating. And he was running unopposed!" Sticks informed them.

There was a pause. "… Wow," Vector said finally.

"I didn't think that was actually possible," Espio commented.

"And I thought the politicians in OUR world were lousy…" Shadow muttered.

…

As the boomerang continued on its path, it passed by a bulletin board, the breeze left in its wake dislodging a sheet of paper and causing it to drift through the air towards a dejected-looking crocodile wearing a black leather jacket, a large golden chain wrapped around his neck, white gloves, dark green yellow wristbands, white sports tape, and high-tops with a tattoo of a Compass rose on his left arm sitting on a nearby bench. "What am I gonna do?" He lamented miserably. "If I don't get some cash, fast, I'm going to get kicked out of my home and onto the streets. And the only jobs anyone seems to be willing to offer me involve grunt work or being some kind of mob enforcer! I mean, sure, the pay's good, but it goes against my moral fiber! Isn't there anything a guy like me can do that doesn't involve me being on the wrong side of the law?"

The dislodged sheet suddenly blew into the side of his face. "Great, and now I'm getting attacked by paper," he complained as he tore the sheet of his face… And paused when he saw what was on it. "Wait a second… They're holding auditions at the studio for detectives for a new crime investigation reality show! I could do that! Hmm, might be a longshot, but this point, I'm willing to try just about anything! Except working at Meh Burger, I'd take being homeless over working at that hellhole."

He got up and headed for the studio, fantasies about all the mysteries he'd solve and money he'd get from doing it flashing through his mind.

…

"Wait, was that me?" Vector asked in surprise.

"It must be, though he seems to have a better fashion sense than you," Espio commented.

"And no headphones!" Charmy jeered.

"So in your world, Vector is a detective as well?" Blaze asked.

Sticks nodded. "Yeah, and an incredibly successful and famous one, too! His show is really popular, and all the mysteries he solves are genuine, other than a recent one being staged by his producer, and he figured that out pretty quickly, and got back my Amy's hammer – – which the producer had stolen to frame someone he had a beef with – – in the process!"

"He recovered my other self's hammer? I immediately like him infinitely better than ours," Amy half-joked.

"Seriously? Because I have a hard time believing that _our_ Vector could detect his way out of a paper bag," Mighty said snidely.

"He's… Successful and popular?" Vector asked slowly.

Sticks nodded. "Yeah, and pretty wealthy, too! He gets a pretty sizable paycheck for every mystery he solves, and that's not even going into all the royalties from the merchandise!"

Vector's eye started twitching. "M-merchandise?"

"Yeah, and I hear the ladies like him a lot as well… Why are you crying?" Sticks asked in puzzlement as Vector burst into tears. Espio padded him awkwardly on the back.

"A world where Vector is an actually good detective and not wallowing in poverty… It's almost too hard for me to believe, and I've seen things that most people WOULDN'T believe," Rouge commented, amazed.

"What about us? Are we famous and successful too?" Charmy asked desperately.

"I've never actually seen you before in my world," Sticks admitted.

The bee's shoulders sagged. "Oh."

"Join the club," Mighty grumbled.

…

"I'm sorry, everyone," a tall and skinny anthropomorphic nutria with aqua fur with bangs mimicking a hairline, cowlicks on his head and neck, green eyes, an almost completely white muzzle, a wide black nose, three zits on each cheek, and two overly large buck teeth with braces on them wearing a lavender shirt with yellow leaf-markings and a name tag on it along with white gloves and a pair of red and cyan sneakers told a crowd of upset customers gathered before him at Meh Burger. A tarp was covering a large object behind him. "But we're all out of the extra-special limited-edition meals that actually taste good and are healthy for you. If you want more, you'll have to wait another five years, though if you're willing to pay in advance, I'm sure I can reserve some meals for you by then-"

Suddenly, the boomerang spun past, slashing the tarp as it went by and causing it to fall off, revealing several large crates with 'EXTRA-SPECIAL LIMITED-EDITION MEALS THAT ACTUALLY TASTE GOOD AND ARE HEALTHY' stamped on their sides. "Oh no, corporate's plan to artificially increase supply and demand is ruined!" The nutria cried as a horde of angry and hungry customers surged towards him.

"Hey, you didn't pay for that!" a light blue humanoid cat running an ice cream cart protested as his latest customer walked off with an ice cream cone.

"Oh yeah? Well I'm evil! I don't feel like paying! Wahahaha!" Said customer, a tall and somewhat round-bodied bald human with a big bushy brown mustache wearing a red jacket with yellow cuffs, a front flap attached to one of the buttons and two flaps hanging from the back, blue pince-nez glasses, white gloves, a set of grey goggles with flappable green lenses, grey pants, a pair of black boots with high rims, and a high-tech gadget on his wrist cackled as he walked away, raising the cone to his mouth as he prepared to lick it…

Only for the boomerang to suddenly fly past, knocking the cone out of the human's hands and dashing into the ground. "No! My ice cream!" He wailed in horror. Enraged, he shook a fist at the departing boomerang. "Don't think this is the end! I'll get you for this, boomerang, if it's the last thing I do!"

"Did you just declare vengeance against an inanimate object?" The ice cream vendor asked skeptically.

"I've declared vengeance on lots of things for far pettier reasons than this!" The human scoffed.

…

"Was that Eggman?" Tails asked, surprised.

"Must be, though he doesn't look as morbidly obese as he usually does," Sonic commented.

"Yeah, more like all the mass went into his upper body. Weird," Mighty agreed.

"Well, given that their Knuckles has an abnormally large upper body, maybe this is just a thing that happens in their world," Shadow joked. Knuckles growled.

"He really declared vengeance on a boomerang?" Charmy asked skeptically.

"Our Eggman's plans are often a bit smaller scale than those in other worlds," Sticks confessed. "One day, he might be implementing a diabolical scheme to beam hypnotic waves into every television on earth to take over the world. Another day, he might turn his lair into a hotel to try and pay off some fines or attempting to blow up City Hall because his garbage STILL hasn't been picked up. That last one's a bit of a recurring problem, actually. Some of us are starting to think that he hates the garbage men even more than he hates Sonic."

"… Not sure how I feel about that," Sonic murmured.

…

The seated heroes watched in awe as the boomerang, finished with its valorous deeds, swung back towards them. Sticks extended a hand, waiting for it to return to her hand…

Only for it to fly past her and smack Knuckles right between the eyes before rebounding and landing in her hand. Knuckles blinked. After several seconds, he said, "Ow!" And fell out of his chair.

His friends stared at the downed echidna for a moment, then at Sticks. The badger cringed. "Um. Oops?"

Sonic stood up and reached over the table, extending a hand to Sticks. "You're hired." Amy and Tails nodded in agreement.

Surprised, Sticks took the hand and shook it, a smile forming on her face before she realized it. Unseen by her, an even wider, and slightly devious, smile now stretched across Perci's face. "And so it begins…" The bandicoot murmured before turning and walking away.

…

"And just like that, I became a member of the team!" Sticks finished.

"By causing physical abuse to Knuckles?" Amy asked questioningly.

"If you ask me, we should use that as criteria for recruitment more often," Shadow commented. Rouge chuckled despite herself.

Knuckles threw his mitts up in exasperation. "Is it some Multiversal constant or something that I'm going to be the butt of the joke, no matter what world I'm in?!" The echidna asked in exasperation.

"Yes," Sticks said.

"… That was a rhetorical question…" Knuckles muttered unhappily.

"It took a while for me to warm up to the rest of the team, given that I'm kind of a loner by nature," Sticks continued. "But after a while, I grew to… Well, not actually trust them, but not trust them less than anyone else. Eventually, I realized I thought of them as my friends. And it was because of that friendship that, finally, I worked up the strength to do something I'd been putting off for a long, long time…"

…

Sticks looked anxiously at the door in front of her. It was pretty innocuous, and certainly not the most imposing or intimidating door she'd come across. And yet, standing before it, she felt fear greater than any she'd ever felt before, and considering all the insane adventures she'd gone on, that was saying something.

Nervously, she glanced over her shoulder, where her friends were waiting. Sonic gave her a thumbs-up. Amy clasped her hands together and gave her a warm smile, Tails gave her an encouraging nod, and Knuckles looked around in confusion, asking, "Wait, why are we here again?"

Fighting back tears of gratitude that she had such great friends as these whom she was mostly certain weren't actually government spies playing the long game to assassinate her, Sticks took a deep breath, stepped forwards, and knocked on the door. She waited for a moment. When nothing happened, she started fidgeting, again wondering if this had been a terrible idea, and was about to call it quits…

When suddenly, she heard the turning of a lock, and the door opened. "Yes, who is-" the query was cut off by a gasp.

Sticks forced a smile, tears starting to stream down her cheeks. "Hi mom. I'm home."

…

Cream gasped. "You found your parents?"

Sticks nodded. "Yeah. They made it back from the one-way trip in one piece, only to find the family home in ruins and my brother and I seemingly dead. For years, they'd thought I was gone forever. So when I turned up on their doorstep, out of the blue, well… Let's just say there was a lot of hugging, and a lot of tears, and leave it at that."

"I'd imagine there would be," Blaze said gently.

"Are things okay between you? I mean, after everything you claim to have been through, it's not like… Well, you're not exactly the badger they remember you being," Amy asked cautiously.

"It's been a bit… Difficult, rekindling our relationship," Sticks confessed. "They aren't 100 percent happy with my current lifestyle and interests, and want me to return home, but… I just… I can't. Not after everything. They also want me to take over the family business, which leaves me feeling… Kinda conflicted. I mean, on the one hand, still being the heir to their vast fortune and next in line to take over the business makes me feel like a hypocrite since that kind of thing sort of goes against everything I stand for, but… If I don't take it, the company will be split apart by my less scrupulous cousins, and that's not really something I want to see happen." She sighed. "I'm going to have to make a decision one way or the other some day, but… Not now. For right now, I just want to keep having adventures with my friends and preparing for the inevitable end of the world. That's not too much to ask, is it?"

"… No. No, it's not," Rouge said quietly. Shadow looked at her in understanding.

"I…may know a thing or two about that myself…" Cream said quietly.

"Why? Oh right, because of the…right, right, not supposed to talk about that," Knuckles said when everyone glared at him.

Sticks sniffled and rubbed her nose. "Wow. You know, I don't think I've told anyone all this stuff before. Weird. Makes me feel kinda… Good, actually, opening up about it… If I didn't know any better, I'd accuse you of having poisoned the food and drink with some truth serum to make me spill my guts, but that's impossible, I've inoculated myself against that sort of thing. Anyway, enough of that sentimental crap. Tails, how are the repairs going?"

"Just about… Done!" Tails declared, holding up her transdimensional transporter device. "It's as good as new, maybe a little better even!"

"Thanks," the badger said, gratitude shining on her face as she took the contraption back from the young Fox. "With this, I can finally get back to my friends. Hopefully they're doing okay without me."

"Well, just open the way, and we'll come with you to help," Sonic promised her. "There's no way I'd leave a guy hanging, especially if it's another me!"

Amy nodded in agreement. "You can count on all of us!"

"Yeah!" Knuckles agreed. The others nodded in agreement, except for Big, who was still fishing and hadn't been paying attention to any of this.

"You know, I don't remember agreeing to that," Charmy interjected.

"Shut it bug, we're going and that's that," Vector said firmly. Charmy sighed.

"Except me, since I still have my own mission to take care of," Silver said quickly.

"You're going to travel through time. Can't you just wait until after this is over to do that? It's not like the past is going anywhere," Espio inquired.

"Which of us here regularly travels through time? Me or you?" Silver snapped.

"Espio, if the guy doesn't want to come with us, that's his choice. Besides, we've probably held him up here longer than we should have what with all those extra storytellers popping up out of the blue," Vector said reasonably.

"Thank you, Vector. I'm glad SOMEONE else feels that way," Silver said, grateful.

"Your loss, I guess," Sticks said, starting to press a series of buttons on the transdimensional transporter. "Still, I think with the rest of you guys, we should be fine. Thanks again for agreeing to come, by the way. You didn't need to stick your next out for me, but I appreciate it regardless."

"It's no problem," Tails assured her.

"Besides, if we didn't come, and you and your friends were defeated, then I'm fairly certain all us would be erased from existence," Shadow pointed out.

"Wait, but if we went with her and lost anyway, wouldn't we still get erased from existence?" Knuckles pointed out.

"Well, we just won't lose, then," Sonic said firmly.

Blaze chuckled. "You make it sound so simple, Beloved."

"That a problem?" He asked.

"Not all. I was just thinking the same thing," she promised him.

"Okay, just another second, and…" Suddenly, a massive swirling vortex of energy opened up nearby. "Wow Tails, you really DID make this thing better, I wasn't even finished inputting the coordinates!"

"Uh, Sticks, I don't think you're the one who opened that," Mighty said in alarm as four shadowy figures became clear in the midst of the crackling energy.

"FOUR-HOSTILES-DETECTED. PREPARING-FOR-MAXIMUM-ANNIHILATION," Omega intoned, weapons popping out all over his body.

"Wait, stop!" Sticks cried, seeing everyone tensing up for battle. "Those aren't hostiles, those are my friends!"

Indeed, once the four beings passed through the portal and into their reality, it was clear they were the alternate-universe versions of Sonic, Tails, Amy, and Knuckles they'd (somehow) seen in Sticks' flashback. Unlike in Sticks' flashback, however, it was clear that the present-day versions of her friends were geared up for battle.

Sonic was inside of a towering black-framed mech-suit about twice the size of Knuckles that looked like a slim silhouette of Sonic's head and had a cockpit in which the hedgehog was seated. Its body also had a grey-framed, windshield-less window up front in the shape of Sonic's eyes. It also possessed cube-shaped grey shoulders, grey shoulder rims, heavily armored grey arms, four-fingered hands with black fingers, and a pair of legs with grey toe-less feet and armor as well as crystal-like blue fins on its elbows and down its spine, and a blue light up front and center. From the numerous dents, scorch marks, and a few broken fins, it was clear he had seen some serious fighting.

Tails was wearing an advanced white spacesuit with yellow boots, belt and arms, and a white helmet with a fin-shaped antenna, spikes to accommodate his ears, and a transparent visor. Over it he had several bandoliers containing pockets stuffed with spare parts, tools, and ammunition, with a variety of different-looking blasters strapped to various parts of his body, along with a wrench. His goggles were currently lowered over his face, which looked a little weird since he was already wearing a helmet with a visor.

Amy was wearing a high-tech insectoid suit of armor comprised of a full-torso metal thorax with transparent pink wings sprouting from the back, striped magenta-and black Greaves going up to her knees with cyan-glowing thrusters mounted on the sides, a blaster resembling a stinger mounted on her left arm, and a grey rhombus-shaped helmet that covered her upper face, with a pair of antenna and sign eyes with slit pupils. Like any good Amy, she was clutching her hammer warily.

Finally, there was Knuckles, who looked fairly ordinary in comparison to his friends… Aside from the fact that he was sitting on top of a massive lavender hippopotamus wearing heavy-duty red and black armor covered in spikes with a pair of massive missile launchers on the sides and laser cannons on the tops and sides of the head, as well as, incongruously, a large red hair bow. Also, the echidna was wearing a bucket on his head.

"Greetings, small animals!" The other Knuckles declared.

"Knuckles, they're about the same height as we are," the other Amy said wearily, as if they'd had this conversation before.

"Really? They look pretty small from up here," the other Knuckles commented surprise.

"Knuckles, do we need to explain how perspective works again?" The other Tails asked in exasperation.

"No," the other Knuckles lied.

"… Wow, that's a sweet Mech suit," Sonic said with a whistle. "Hey Tails, how come you never built me one of those?"

"You never asked," Tails said distractedly, frowning as he analyzed his alternate self. _Interesting. Going by his attire and Arsenal, he relies more on technology than physical prowess in fights than I do. Did his Sonic not push him to engage in physical activities as much as mine did? Or are there other factors at play here? Whoever he is, he's clearly at least as smart as I am, judging from what I can see just by looking at him as well as the transdimensional transporter device…_

Amy glanced from her doppelgänger's hammer to her own, trying to determine which of them was bigger. _What is she wearing?_ She thought with a scowl. _I never needed armor! And insect-themed? Yuck…_

"… Okay, why is the other me wearing a bucket on his head?" Asked the confused Knuckles.

"Guy's riding on top of the heavily armed-hippopotamus, and THAT'S the bit you focus on?!" Vector asked incredulously.

"The hippopotamus is heavily armed and armored. Why is the best he could scrape up a bucket?" Knuckles countered.

"Because it's a fashion statement, of course!" The other Knuckles proclaimed, causing the first Knuckles to grimace. His alternate self sounded a lot like him, but much… Stupider, somehow. That, as well as how the other echidna's body proportions were… _off_ , gave him a rather unsettling feeling.

"That, and I spent so much time and resources tuning up Sonic's Mech suit, upgrading my weapons and suit, modifying Bea so Amy could use her as armor, and powering up Miss Tomatopotamus that by the time I got to Knuckles, the bucket was the best I could give him," the other Tails admitted sheepishly.

"Hey, how come you never gave me anything?!" Sticks demanded indignantly.

"I offered, but you refused because you hate and distrust technology in all its forms," the other Tails reminded her.

"Ah, so true," the badger admitted.

"Sticks!" The other Amy cried, her insect mask splitting down the middle and unfolding to the sides to reveal her overjoyed face. "You're all right! We were so worried about you!"

"Hold it!" Sticks shouted before the other Amy could run towards her. "How do I know you're REALLY my friends and not evil shapeshifters from another dimension pretending to be my friends to trick me into letting down my guard so you can eat my brains?!"

"She does that to you, too?" Shadow asked the newcomers wearily.

"She does it to EVERYBODY," the other Sonic groaned.

"Prove that you're really my friends! What's the safe word?" Sticks demanded.

"Sticks, if we told you the word, you would just accuse us of being mind readers and continue suspecting us," the other Tails said with a sigh.

"Huh, good point. And that DOES sound like something my Tails would say… All right, for the time being, I'll assume you're actually my friends here to rescue me. But I've got my eye on you!" Sticks warned the Fox. The other Tails rolled his eyes.

"Does that mean I can hug you now?" Amy asked hopefully.

"Yeah, okay," Sticks said. Amy immediately glomped her, much to the badger's discomfort.

"Awww," Cream cooed.

"Hey, thanks for taking care of her. We hope we she wasn't too much trouble," the other Sonic said, stomping over in his Mech suit.

"Oh, she was no trouble at all," Amy assured him. "We were happy to have her!"

"Well, she was a little troublesome," Espio commented. Amy grimaced.

"A 'little' is an understatement," Silver griped. The others frowned at him.

"Yeah, that's about what we would expect from her," the other Sonic said with a nod.

"She told us her backstory. Pretty wild stuff, if it's true," Vector spoke up.

"It was true! Every single word of it!" Sticks insisted, trying and failing to free herself from her Amy's grasp. "At least, I think it is."

"… You THINK?!" Knuckles demanded incredulously.

Sticks shrugged as much she could while being hugged. "Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes I remember it a little differently. Most of the core stuff stays the same, though. Usually."

"I told you she was crazy," Silver growled. Blaze glared at him.

"That's a pretty sweet ride you've got there," Sonic told his alternate self. "Your Tails did good work on it."

"I-COULD-TAKE-IT-ON," Omega said, unimpressed.

The other Tails chuckled. "Flattering as that may be, I can't take credit for it. This suit is actually a relic left behind by the Ancients. There's stuff like that in ruins, caves, and other places all over our island."

"Our world doesn't have the Chaos Emeralds that most other worlds with other versions of us do, so I don't have any method of going Super Saiyan or whatever," the other Sonic explained. "Hence why I wear the suit, for when things get REALLY serious."

Sonic blinked in surprise. "A world without Chaos Emeralds? That's… Kind of hard to imagine, honestly."

"My world doesn't have Chaos Emeralds," Blaze reminded him.

"Your world has Sol Emeralds. They're basically the same thing," Charmy said flippantly. The cat scowled at him.

"We don't have Chaos Emeralds, but we do have Chaos Crystals," the other Tails explained. "As well as tons of other mystical and incredibly powerful gemstones we occasionally fight Eggman over."

"Does that mean you don't guard the Master Emerald?" Knuckles asked his counterpart.

The other Knuckles shook his head. "No, but I DO protect Herman."

"… Herman?" Shadow asked in confusion.

"He means the Fregosi Sapphire, an ambiguously powerful gemstone that's a great source of energy for machinery," the other Tails explained.

"Why do you call it Herman?" Asked the confused Mighty.

The other Knuckles shrugged. "He seemed like a Herman. What, you mean you don't have a name for your ambiguously powerful ancient mystical gemstone?"

"No!" Knuckles protested. Everyone looked at him. "Well, okay, not since I was a puggle, but that's completely irrelevant! And besides, Rouge has names for most of her gems, so it's not that weird!"

"You name your gemstones?" Espio asked Rouge.

The bat shrugged. "Well, if diamonds and the like are a girl's best friend, it's rude not to give your friends names, isn't it?"

"Exactly!" The other Knuckles said triumphantly.

"… A beautiful woman just agreed with our Knuckles on something. I'm beginning to wonder if there's something wrong with your world," the other Tails commented, disturbed.

"Given what we've heard about your world from Sticks, we could say the same to you," Tails countered.

"Touché," the other Fox conceded.

"Does the hippopotamus have a name, too?" Cream asked eagerly.

The other Knuckles nodded. "Yep! She's Miss Tomatopotamus, the first female to star in the Tomatopotamus videogame franchise, shattering gender archetypes with her unique design!"

"The designers put a bow on the regular Tomatopotamus Sprite," the other Sonic explained.

"It was revolutionary!" The other Knuckles insisted.

"She's so pretty!" Cream squealed.

"…Really? Pretty? That?" Vector asked skeptically.

"If my great-niece says she's pretty, she's damn well pretty!" Shadow snapped.

"Okay, okay, she's pretty!" Vector frantically backpedaled.

Miss Tomatopotamus made a crooning sound. "I think she liked it! Or not. I have no idea what she's saying because I can't speak hippo," the other Knuckles confessed.

"If she's a video game character, why is she real?" Asked the confused Amy.

"I was able to materialize her in our world using my Build-it Box. It's like a 3-D printer, but even more powerful," the other Tails explained.

"Yeah, it was not only able to bring Miss Tomatopotamus to life, but an evil bunch of computer viruses as well," the other Sonic spoke up. "We also used it to build an even bigger box to make us some cars."

"Mine has wheels on the roof! And a pizza oven inside!" the other Knuckles said proudly.

"A pizza-Isn't that a serious safety hazard?" Asked the baffled Shadow.

"Not after Tails made it so it will only work when I'm in Park it's not," the other Knuckles explained.

"… Why… Why wouldn't it be like that in the first place?!" Asked a dumbfounded Knuckles.

"Well, how else am I supposed to eat pizza on the road?" The other Knuckles said indignantly. "I expected more from you, other me! What, next are you going to tell me that you aren't the leader of your team?"

"Well, I don't-wait, are you the leader of yours?!" Knuckles spluttered in disbelief.

"Yep!" The other Knuckles proclaimed.

"No," the other Sonic said flatly. "He's delusional, please ignore him."

"Hey! I'm not an illusion, YOU'RE an illusion!" The other Knuckles retorted angrily.

"Knuckles, I said DElusional. Do you even know what either of those words mean?" The other Sonic asked, annoyed.

"Am to!" The other Knuckles said firmly.

"What? That doesn't even… Oh, forget it. I don't even know why I bother," the other Sonic sighed in exasperation.

"… My God, I didn't think it was possible, but we've actually met a Knuckles that's dumber than ours," said a disturbed Vector.

Knuckles put his face in his hands. "Does the multiverse just hate me? Is that it? Did I or one of my alternate selves do something so horrible in a past life that we're fated to be the laughingstock of all of existence in retribution? Is that what's happening here?"

"It might be," Rouge said.

Knuckles glared at her. "That's not helping."

"Wasn't trying to," she said cheerfully.

"Fascinating! We don't have boxes like that in this world. I don't suppose I could see the specifications?" Tails asked, eager.

"Certainly! I think I have them saved here somewhere…" The other Tails murmured, tapping at the device on his wrist.

"What about your armor?" Amy asked the other Amy. "Did Tails build it, did you find it in an ancient temple, or did you buy it in a store or something?"

"Hmmm? Oh, none of the above," the other Amy said, releasing Sticks, who sucked in several deep breaths in relief. She tapped her chest plate a few times, and her armor suddenly split apart and flew off of her, reassembling in the air next to her to form a robot resembling a mechanical bee. "Bea here is my pet Bee Bot! Tails repaired her after one of our countless battles with Eggman and reprogrammed her to be my friend! She's been my loyal and beloved pet ever since, and thanks to Tails installing a piece of Herman – – I mean, the Fregosi Sapphire – – in her, she never has to worry about being taken over by Eggman again. Tails upgraded her again when we got called to join the big battle to save the multiverse so she could serve as powered armor."

"That's so sweet!" Cream squealed. "So it's like the two of you are fighting together as one! You know, I wonder if Cheese and I could do that…" The Chao shrugged. "Well, I'm sure we could find some magic to make it so. I mean, given that I'm the Empress of all Chao now or something. Anyway, miss Amy, your pet is so beautiful! She reminds me of some of the robots my dad - I mean, that we have around the house. You must take really good care of her."

"Why thank you, Cream!" the other Amy replied, pleased. Bea buzzed happily. "And I believe Bea feels the same way."

"How do you know that?" The other Knuckles demanded. He gasped. "Unless… Amy, have you been able to speak bee this entire time?! And yet you didn't do anything to save me from that swarm the other day, or keep Tails from going crazy that one time he got fused with a Bee Bot? How could you? I thought we were friends!"

"What?! No, Knuckles, I don't… that's not…" The other Amy sighed and facepalmed. "Why do we even bother…"

"Knuckles, I hate to say it, but compared to this guy, you're a genius," Shadow said slowly.

"I feel like I should be insulted, if it weren't so true," Knuckles said morosely.

"Wait, that's a rogue Eggman robot? Is that safe?" Vector asked in concern.

"I'm sure she's just as safe as… Well, no, dad programmed them to be my friends, that probably doesn't count…" Cream murmured.

"Egg… I mean, your father gave you some pet robots?" Blaze asked.

Cream nodded. "He thinks they make better pets then Chao since they don't need to eat anything and clean up after themselves."

"Makes sense," Tails said.

"I-AM-A-ROGUE-EGGMAN-ROBOT," Omega reminded Vector.

"And YOU'RE safe?" The crocodile retorted.

"FAIR-POINT," Omega conceded.

"Don't worry, Bea here would never hurt anyone unless she thought they were threatening me," Amy assured them, petting the head of her pet, who happily leaned into the strokes. "Because she's a sweet, _good_ robot at heart! And also because Tails reprogrammed her not to."

Tails nodded. "Yeah, we learned our lesson from Buster."

"Buster?" Rouge asked.

"He was _my_ pet former Eggman robot for a while," Sticks explained. "Unfortunately, I had to release him into the wild because it was just too dangerous having him around."

"Also because he was constantly throwing up green slime and disgusting us," the other Sonic added.

"You just WISH you could have what Buster and I did!" the badger snarled.

"I have Friendbot!" The other Sonic protested.

"I'm not sure Friendbot counts as a pet, Sonic," the other Tails corrected his friend.

"Friendbot?" Asked a confused Shadow.

"From the name, I would assume he's a robot programmed to be someone's friend," Blaze hypothesized.

"Actually, he used to be programmed to kill me, but then he decided he didn't want to and we're friends now," the other Sonic explained.

"Until Hypnobot brainwashed every robot on the island and in the flying city of Morristown to kill us," the other Tails muttered him.

"Yeah, except for that," the other Sonic admitted.

"Morristown?" Mighty murmured, bewildered.

"You mean Roboken," the other Amy corrected the Fox.

"Yes, but it wasn't called Roboken then," the other Tails pointed out.

"Roboken?" Knuckles repeated, dumbfounded.

"Flying city populated by sentient alien robots. Now protected by cyborg clones of ourselves," the other Sonic explained. "Nothing big."

"…Ah," Knuckles said vaguely.

"… And was Hypnotbot an Eggman robot?" Asked an increasingly lost Espio.

"Actually no, he was mine," the other Tails confessed. "Long story."

"Just how many reformed Eggman robots do you guys know, anyway?" Asked an astonished Charmy.

"Not that many," the other Amy said.

The other Knuckles nodded. "Yeah, just Buster, and Bea, and Friendbot, and D-Fekt, and that Valley full of Orbot prototypes, and Cubot and Orbot depending on the day…"

"… Huh. You know, when you put it that way, quite a lot of Eggman's robots switch sides, don't they?" The other Tails realized.

"If only that happened more with ours," Sonic complained.

"I-DID," Omega pointed out.

"You didn't switch sides so much as decide to be a part of whatever group was the likeliest to allow you to kill your creator," Shadow pointed out.

"THIS-IS-TRUE," Omega admitted.

"Anyway, enough wasting time going down memory lane! We have a big battle to decide the fate of the multiverse to get back to!" Sticks declared.

"Yeah, and we're going with you!" Sonic agreed.

Shadow nodded. "Don't even think of leaving us out."

"You all wanna help?" The other Sonic asked, looking somewhat uneasy.

"No, but I don't think I actually have a choice in the matter," Charmy admitted.

"No, you don't," Vector agreed.

"Well, we're flattered, but… Well… The thing is…" The other Amy stammered, looking embarrassed.

"The battle's already… Kind of over," the other Tails admitted.

There was a long pause. "What," Sticks said finally.

"Yeah, we beat the bad guys and saved all of creation! It was really awesome. A shame you weren't there to see it," the other Knuckles lamented. "Oh well, your loss."

"You… You finished the battle?! WITHOUT ME?!" Sticks shrieked.

"Yeah. Um, sorry?" The other Amy said sheepishly.

"It's not like we WANTED to finish without you or anything. In fact, we wanted to come rescue you the instant we realized you were gone, but… Well, unfortunately, shit had hit the fan by that point and we really didn't have the chance," the other Sonic said apologetically.

Sticks groaned. "Oh boy. What happened?"

"Well, the Grand United Alliance of Heroes managed to storm the castle, destroy all the defenses and fortress defenders, and the Super Duper Smash Siblings confronted the big villains in their throne room, but they were too late!" The other Tails recalled. "Using a device built by Robotnik Prime, they were able to harness the unlimited multidimensional power of the Infiniforce Star Diamond to fuse themselves with all of their parallels in every reality and become the omnipotent God Egg, Catastrophe Ganon, and Devil Bowser, the sheer malevolence from their combined evil so great that it began to unravel all of existence itself."

"Seriously? Dang. Sounds like you could've really used my phenomenal cosmic powers right about then," Sticks commented.

Vector threw up his hands in exasperation. "Oh NOW you remember them!"

"Remember what?" the badger asked in confusion. Vector groaned and went to bang his head on the top of a nearby table.

"Fortunately, we had an ace up our sleeve as well," the other Sonic said. "By combining all of our magical macguffins together, we were also able to use the same machine- well, after Tails and every other brainiac had fixed it, of course – – to fuse ourselves with all of OUR parallels in every reality to become Almighty cosmic heroes of absolute power and virtue to take on evil of that magnitude."

"It was really trippy," the other Knuckles recalled.

"Wait, then how come we didn't get fused with you?" Amy pointed out.

The other Tails shrugged. "Well, the machine _was_ damaged. It's possible we missed a few. After all, the multiverse is really, really big."

"Even with all of us working together – – and let me tell you, there were A LOT of us – – it was still an incredibly close battle. Just when we thought we had them on the ropes, they fused together AGAIN to become Final Evil. So naturally, we had to do them one better and fuse ourselves to become Ultimate Good, a being of such power and, well, goodness it's… Kind of hard to describe," the other Sonic said wistfully.

"I felt tingly," the other Knuckles recalled.

"The resulting battle was so great, the entire multiverse was destroyed in an instant, then remade exactly like it had been before, several times over," the other Tails said.

"Wait, wouldn't we have noticed that?" Asked an alarmed Amy.

"It was really fast. You probably wouldn't have," the other Sonic said.

"After a battle so epic that I doubt any form of media could ever possibly describe it with any form of accuracy, in the end, the forces of good were able to prevail. Ganondorf, Bowser, and Robotnik Prime were defeated, all their destruction was undone, and the pieces of the Infiniforce Star Diamond were once more scattered to the furthest ends of creation, never to be assembled again," The other Tails concluded.

"And we stopped being almighty cosmic heroes of absolute power and virtue. I'm not really sure if that was a good thing or not," the other Amy complained. "It was kind of weird, but also…felt really, really good."

"Yeah, I had all the knowledge in every universe in my head. Well, our heads. It was something else," the other Tails lamented.

"It must've been," Tails agreed with sympathy and no small amount of envy.

"With everything taken care of, we said our goodbyes and began the trip home. With a quick stop to pick up you, of course, Sticks," the other Sonic finished.

"After we got chili dogs," the other Knuckles corrected him.

"WHAT?!" Sticks shrieked.

"Knuckles! You weren't supposed to tell her that!" The other Amy hissed.

"Oops," the other Knuckles said.

"Huh, good to see that blurting out things you aren't supposed to is another common trait of yours across the dimensions," Shadow commented. Knuckles groaned.

"As are Shadows being jerks," the other Sonic retorted.

"Ooh, burn!" Charmy cackled as Shadow snarled.

"Is the Shadow of your world really that bad?" Cream asked in concern.

The other Sonic nodded. "Yeah, he tried to kill me during a battle through time. Then he tried to kill me while being mind-controlled by Lyric. Then he tried to kill me during a team up with Eggman and the other local bad guys. I don't really know what his deal is, except that he likes to try and kill me."

"That sounds nothing like me!" Shadow protested. Everyone looked at him. "Well, not anymore…"

"Who cares about Shadow?! What I wanna know is why you guys put off rescuing me to get some lunch! For all you know, I could've been dead or torture or worse!" Sticks demanded furiously.

"In our defense, we were very hungry," the other Knuckles said unapologetically.

"Knuckles, that's not helping," the other Sonic sighed.

"I was supposed to be helping?" Asked the confused echidna.

"In our _actual_ defense, we got assured by some very reliable people that you were in no great danger, so we didn't need to rush," the other Amy said.

"But we knew we should rush anyway in case you wound up getting yourself into trouble, so we got takeout, in case you were hungry too," the other Sonic explained, holding up several paper bags in one of his suit's claws.

"Oh! Well, that's very thoughtful of you," Sticks said, calming down. "As you can see from the spread here, I've had plenty to sate my appetite, but I appreciate the thought."

"Cool, so can Miss Tomatopotamus have those chili dogs? Because she didn't get nearly enough to eat," Knuckles said.

Sonic shrugged. "Yeah, all right." He tossed the bags at Miss Tomatopotamus, who happily snapped them up in a single gulp.

Cream giggled. "She's a hungry, hungry hippo, isn't she?"

"No, she's a hungry, hungry Tomatopotamus. There's a difference," Knuckles corrected her.

"So, now that you're here and it turns out there's no big disaster looming over your heads anymore, you want to stay a while, chat, maybe tell us your origin stories?" Sonic suggested half-jokingly.

"OH DON'T YOU EVEN!" Silver shrieked.

"While that sounds like fun, we're going to have to pass," the other Sonic said apologetically. "We've been away from our world for too long already, and should probably get back before something terrible happens, like the Lightning Bolt Society actually doing something somewhat threatening for a change, or the mayor legalizing crime again."

"Oh, that's a shame," Cream said in disappointment.

"Well, you've gotta do what you gotta do," Vector said, still clearly unhappy that his alternate self was ridiculously successful and he wasn't.

"Don't worry, I've given Other Me our coordinates, so he can call us if there's ever need," the other Tails informed them.

"Hopefully, there never will be," Knuckles muttered, hoping he would never have to see his much stupider other self ever again.

"Yeah, but you know how these things go. It's only a matter of time before some other huge multiversal crisis comes up, so it's probably a good idea to keep in touch just in case," Tails pointed out. "Just because we weren't in this one doesn't mean we might not be involved in the next one, so it would probably be a good idea to maintain communication with other dimensions just to be safe. Even if it's not purely for emergencies, it's still a good idea, since there is probably a lot we can learn from each other."

"It certainly makes being with my Beloved easier," Blaze said warmly. Sonic blushed at that.

Amy growled, and then got an idea. "Other me, before you go, could you, um, possibly tell me how you managed to win your Sonic's heart?" She asked hopefully.

Everyone groaned. "Why am I not surprised she'd try to ask that?" Shadow complained.

"The really surprising thing is that she didn't do it sooner," Espio remarked.

The other Sonic and Amy started laughing nervously as their friends rolled their eyes. "Ahahaha, what are you talking about? Who told you were together? We aren't together. That, that would be silly!" The other Amy said frantically.

"Yeah, we're just friends," the other Sonic confessed.

"And nothing more!" The other Amy agreed.

"I mean, okay, sometimes we have picnics and go out to movies or have meals together without anyone else, but that doesn't mean we're dating," the other Sonic insisted.

"Yeah, and the fact that I have Sonic's picture in my wallet and a life-size doll of him that I sometimes snuggle with in my sleep means absolutely nothing!" The other Amy added.

"Yeah! Wait, what?" The other Sonic asked, surprised by this.

Everyone stared at the other Amy. "…Riiiiiiight," Charmy said slowly.

"I don't believe you!" Knuckles announced.

"Really? I do," the other Knuckles said, surprised. Knuckles' eye twitched.

"My God, he really is more gullible than you," said an astounded Shadow.

Knuckles facepalmed. "Just… Just don't, okay?"

"Maybe we should go before things get even more awkward?" The other Tails suggested gently, noticing how incredibly embarrassed his Amy looked.

"That. Um. That would probably be a good idea," the other Sonic agreed sheepishly.

The other Tails tapped a few buttons on his wrist-mounted device, and another swirling interdimensional vortex opened up behind them. "Okay, that's our way home. Other me, you should be hearing from me shortly. I've set up a network with the other Tails as well to establish a way for us to trade information and ideas across the space-time continuum."

"I look forward to communing with you," Tails said cheerfully.

"I guess this is goodbye. Thanks again for keeping me company while I waited for my friends," Sticks said to everyone who wasn't from her dimension. "And if you say so much as a word of anything I've just told you all, I'll return here and kill you. Got it?"

"Got it," Espio said.

"But didn't most of what she just said already get broadcast worldwide through-" Charmy started, only for Vector to quickly wrap his hands over his mouth to shut him up.

"Smaller, inferior me, keep working at it, and one day you will be as mighty a leader as I am!" The other Knuckles told his counterpart.

"Knuckles, you aren't the leader," the other Sonic said in exasperation.

"Of course I'm not, Sonic. Of course I'm not," the other Knuckles said in a way which very much indicated he didn't think that was the case.

"Do you believe him, Knuckles?" Rouge joked.

"I hate everything," the echidna said bluntly.

"Oh hey, other me, a few months from now all the other Sonics are going to get together to have a race with every other speedster hero out there to see who the fastest in all of time and space is. You want in?" The other Sonic asked.

"Do I!" Sonic said excitedly.

"That does sound like it should be interesting," Blaze spoke up.

"You can count me in as well," Shadow added.

"Great! Tails can forward the details to your Tails. You guys should probably start training right away, there's gonna be some pretty fierce competition!" The other Sonic said with a grin.

Sonic smiled back. "Wouldn't be any fun if there weren't!"

The other Sonic chuckled. "Well, yeah! Anyway, we really should get going. But I look forward to seeing you at the race!"

"You know it!" Sonic shot back.

"And other me, keep at it! I'm sure you'll win his heart someday!" Amy exclaimed to her counterpart.

"Ahahahaha I have no idea what you're talking about _Tails get us out of here!"_ The other Amy shrieked. The other Tails rolled his eyes and pushed a few more buttons on his wrist, and the vortex expanded, swallowing them up and closing on itself, taking the visitors from another world with it.

"So, do _you_ have a life-sized doll of Sonic?" Mighty asked Amy after several awkward minutes had passed.

" _I don't want to talk about it!"_ She screeched.

"Beloved-" Blaze started.

"Blaze, no," Sonic told her firmly. The cat sighed and acquiesced.

"Well, I'm glad that's settled!" Silver said loudly. "And now that this unwelcome distraction is over, I can _finally_ get back to my mission! Everyone, thank you for all the help you've given me, you've done more to help the timestream then I think you'll ever realize. And with that, I must bid you adieu-"

Without warning, there was a very loud gunshot, startling everyone. _"Not so fast, buckoes!"_

" _OH WHAT NOW?!"_ Silver wailed as everyone looked around in alarm, readying themselves for battle.

"What… Where did that-" Tails stammered.

Rouge's ears twitched, a look of disbelief on her face. "I don't sense any heartbeats or smell blood…"

"AND-MY-SENSORS-ARE-PICKING-UP-NOTHING," Omega beeped, his hands turning into chain guns as he swiveled around, looking for a target.

"We don't smell anything, either," Blaze growled as her Biter sniffed the air, looking confused.

"Cream, stay close," Shadow growled, moving protectively over his great-niece.

"O-okay, Grunkle Shadow," Cream whimpered as she clutched Cheese to her chest, frightened.

Sonic frowned. "That voice…something about it feels… _familiar…_ "

The Chaotix (and Mighty) stiffened, eyes wide with horror. "No… That voice _…_ It can't be…!" Espio gasped.

"It is!" Charmy shrieked. "It's-"

The air before them shimmered, and suddenly a familiar-looking purple weasel/Wolf hybrid wearing a Stetson hat and riding atop a silently running airbike faded into view, a psychotic grin on his face and a pair of very large guns in his hands. "Fang the Sniper, one of the most wanted men alive and greatest bounty Hunter on the planet? You've got it, mates… And I'm here to tell you sorry lot a story…"

…

Well, that took MUCH longer than it should have. Sorry about that. Again.

In any event, next chapter is the penultimate chapter and the final origin of this story. The tale of the dreaded Fang the Sniper…


End file.
